Capitol Weekly’s Top 100: Kim Johnson

No. 18 Kim Johnson

Following someone as substantial as Dr. Mark Ghaly as California’s Secretary of Health and Human Services is like being asked to pinch hit for Babe Ruth. It’s hard to find anyone around
the Capitol community as widely respected as Ghaly, but the governor didn’t just pluck Johnson off a park bench somewhere. She has a long history working at the highest levels of California’s social services networks, which matters a lot here because the job in front of her is going to be one of the toughest around. In the coming year alone she will somehow have to balance impending federal health care spending cuts with supporting her boss’s ambitious health care goals, most notably the massive changes to the state’s behavioral health care system, one of the most Byzantine in government. The state has committed billions of dollars to make it happen, but someone has to oversee it all, and that means someone has to be the one responsible for its failure if things go south. Because we already know who will claim the credit if things go well.