SACRAMENTO — With a new gang czar on the job, the state is focusing more attention on gang violence that has killed as many as 15,000 people statewide in the past 25 years.

Paul Seave, the new state director of gang and youth violence policy, comes on board as the state enacts new laws and ramps up spending to at least $31 million a year for a range of programs from law enforcement to job training to combat gangs.

“This is the first time that we have had a statewide effort,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in September in appointing Seave.

But it’s not enough for law enforcement groups working with Sen. George Runner, R-Antelope Valley, and his wife, Assemblywoman Sharon Runner, who are proposing a ballot initiative to spend more, boost penalties and support recreational and mentoring programs to combat gangs.

“This is what we hear from law enforcement that they need,” Sen. Runner said.

This heightened attention to gangs has brought into sharper public focus sometimes conflicting data and views on the extent of the gang problem and the proper state role in addressing it.

The governor’s office, for example, says there are 420,000 gang members statewide, while the attorney general’s official puts the number at 300,000.

Views on Seave’s job range from “visionary,” in the words of Jorja Leap, University of California, Los Angeles, gang expert, to a “cheap” bid by the governor to look like he’s doing something, in Sen. Runner’s opinion.

“Practically nobody would think that what we really need is a gang czar,” said Franklin Zimring, a criminal law expert at Boalt Hall, the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.

Based on his experience as a former U.S. attorney and former director of the state attorney general’s Crime and Violence Prevention Center, Seave disagreed.

“I took this job because I think it is absolutely necessary to deal with a problem that has not been acknowledged for a long time statewide: gang violence and gang homicides,” Seave said.