New Baja California Governor Promises To Stop Cross-Border Sewage

Speaker 1: 00:00 November marked a shift in the leadership of Baja California. Friday hommie Bonia was sworn into office as governor with big promises to address issues like poverty and cross border sewage flows. His new leadership has been met with criticism. Joining us to talk more about it is Wendy fry, who's been covering this for the San Diego union Tribune. Wendy, welcome. Speaker 2: 00:21 Hi. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1: 00:23 First, can you tell us a bit about governor hommie Binya? Who is he and what did he run on? Speaker 2: 00:28 So he is sort of a cross border figure, a politician who served in office in both on both sides of the border, formally with the Senate in the Baja California. And then he also served as the director of the OTI water district here in Chula Vista. And he's also very closely aligned with president, the current president of Mexico. Politically, they're friends, they've been friends for a long time, and their political ideology is similar Speaker 1: 00:54 and Binya won the election by what could be described as a landslide, right? Speaker 2: 00:59 Yeah, absolutely it, there was very low voter turnout, but he was, yeah, I think around 30 points ahead of his, his nearest challenger. I'm Oscar Vega. So yes. Speaker 1: 01:08 Hmm. In his first speech as governor, he spoke about stopping bras, sewage from flowing into Imperial beach. What is he proposing? How is he going to do that? Speaker 2: 01:16 Great. So that's been a priority. Even that the president, Andres Manuel Lopez, Obrador and Jaime Bonia have been talking about even before Nia was in office, we've been talking about what a priority that is because I, they sort of feel like it's an embarrassment to Mexico that they have this problem that's affecting another country in affecting Imperial beach. And so what they want to do is get the, get the source system working well for Rosarito and for the beach communities in, in Baja, California so that this problem doesn't happen on either side of the border Speaker 1: 01:49 and he's, he's committed to doing that within six months. Speaker 2: 01:52 That's what he said in his, in his inaugural speech. Yes. Speaker 1: 01:55 Yeah. That seems like a pretty short time frame to fix a problem that has played the area for years. You do you think that's realistic? Speaker 2: 02:02 We'll have to, we'll have to watch and see. I know one of the problems that's been happening in Baja, California is that there's different on the different levels of government, municipal, state and federal. There's different political parties in charge, but now it's all synergized into one. They're all the same Marina political party and sometimes the different parties sort of fight each other over priorities, but now that we're seeing them all in one political party, maybe we'll see a lot more cooperation between the different levels of government because they're all on the same and so we'll have to wait and see if that gets things moving. Speaker 1: 02:40 Does he hope that his experience at the OTI water district and his relationships on this side of the border will be valuable and and finding solutions to the sewage problem? Speaker 2: 02:49 Right. I think he's, he's a very rare and that he's one of the very few politicians on either side of the border. Did I know that? Have those ties to both governments. I'm at a state, federal, local level on both sides of the border. So we definitely understand how politics works very well in Mexico and very well and in California. Speaker 1: 03:10 And so what are some of the other promises he made in his speech that stood out to you? Speaker 2: 03:14 Right. His speech was a lot about services, increasing the services and, and taking the money that that is paid to the government and putting it back to the people. So he made the promise that all kids are going to start having a hot breakfast. Um, and that's something they, that he has already started working on with a former school teacher from national city. She's going to be a liaison liaison to the United States from the D, which is like the CPS agency, the child protection agency, uh, in Baja. And they're going to work on making sure all students get fed at school like they do over here. We think that is like, obviously kids are going to get fed at school, but that doesn't always happen in Baja, California. They don't always have a hot meal for the day. And, um, so that's one of the things that he's gonna work on. And he just talked a lot about in other areas, public safety, transportation, increasing those services to the residents of Tijuana. Speaker 1: 04:07 And also in 2018 a record high of 2,500 people were killed in Tijuana. Baja California is most populated city has he talked about ways that he'd like to address rising homicide rates. Speaker 2: 04:18 Great. And we just had a bloody weekend this weekend too with several executions throughout the city as well. So it's obviously a continuing problem. It's been a problem for a long time. The violence is definitely the top concern of most residents. I think one of the new strategies that they are talking about is increasing and addressing the judicial system. So increasing the number of judges that you want to has right now, like [inaudible] has 28 or 24 judges and to want to only has 12 and so that slows down the justice system and sort of sometimes let people operate with impunity, with the violence. And so that's one of the things that they're, they're looking at doing, Speaker 1: 04:55 governor Binya is from the president's Mirena party. How is this shift playing out given that the pond party has held power in Baja for the last 30 years? Speaker 2: 05:04 Right. So the huge shift, there's all the normal that you would expect when a new administration comes in. They're sort of airing all the dirty laundry from the previous administration. So we're getting a lot of information about the budget and they say that a lot of money is missing from the state budget. And so that's one of the shifts that's happening. And then the other shift, like I talked about, I don't think that we've ever seen in Baja California where the federal government matches the state government, the political party of the state government, which matches the, the political party of the mythical government. And, uh, in Mexico, those, those parties work very much against each other. If they're on opposite sides of, you know, they, they don't cooperate very well. If there, if there's a, um, the pan is in charge of the state government and the pre is in charge of the federal government, there's going to be tension and fighting there. As far as getting things done. Speaker 1: 05:55 I've been speaking with Wendy fry watchdog and accountability reporter with the San Diego union Tribune. Wendy, thank you very much for joining us. Speaker 2: 06:02 Absolutely. Speaker 3: 06:03 I can.