Monday, November 17, 2003
Schwarzenegger names Kim Belshe new Health Secretary
By: San Jose Mercury News
Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday named a top health official from an earlier Republican administration as his new secretary of health and human services.
S. Kimberly Belshe, who ran the California Department of Health Services under former Gov. Pete Wilson, will now oversee that department along with the state's welfare programs, job training, rehabilitation and other social services. She replaces current secretary Grantland Johnson. Her appointment must be confirmed by the state Senate.
Belshe will face a number of controversies in a tough budget climate, including expensive earthquake retrofits for the state's hospitals and potential cuts in mental health and other services for the poor.
Officials for physician and hospital lobbying organizations Friday described Belshe as fair and reasonable and said they welcomed her back to government. A representative of the California Nurses Association, the powerful union of registered nurses, said, "she is someone we can work with."
"She was accessible and knowledgeable about the issues," said Dr. Jack Lewin, head of the California Medical Association, the doctors' lobby. "I think it's a very positive move for the governor.
"But some consumer health advocates criticized her performance under Wilson, saying she cut health care programs for the poor and undercut tobacco control efforts at that governor's behest.
Noted anti-tobacco advocate Dr. Stanton Glantz said Belshe carried out policies that "dramatically watered down" the state tobacco control program, but he believes she later realized the tobacco control program was "good for California."
Glantz also noted that Belshe worked on behalf of tobacco companies in the late 1980s during a job she held with a public relations firm. The firm represented the tobacco companies in their 1988 bid to defeat Proposition 99, a tobacco tax, according to news accounts at the time. The proposition passed.
Belshe, 43, was only two weeks into her new job as executive vice president at the California Endowment, a private health foundation, when she was tapped for her new job.
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