3 big bills in a pile of minutiae

Gov. Jerry Brown has a clutter of 600 bills piled on his desk to sign or veto by Oct. 9.

The Legislature dumped them there before it adjourned for the year early Saturday.

Many aren’t worth the paper their glowing news releases were printed on — and certainly not worth the $20,000 legislative cost, on average, that each bill ate up in processing.

“Solutions in search of a problem,” Brown has called them.

But some would enact significant policy changes that merit attention. Here are three, with my cheap advice to the governor.

• Firearms. AB 144 by Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Canada Flintridge). It would prohibit someone from openly carrying an unloaded gun in a public place — such as a Starbucks or a sports bar.

Most Democrats voted for it. Republicans were unanimously against.

A long list of police chiefs asked for this legislation after anti-gun-control zealots began dressing up like Wyatt Earp and parading into coffee shops, scaring the customers, in a misguided effort to protest what they regarded as an erosion of their 2nd Amendment rights.

But wait. Earp was actually trying to keep the yokels from packing sidearms in Tombstone — loaded or unloaded — and that sensible request led to the shootout at OK Corral. Hard to believe we’re still fighting the same Wild West battle.

Yes, the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms — just as the 1st Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, with limits. You can’t cry fire in a crowded theater. And you shouldn’t be allowed to frighten and provoke shoppers by openly carting a firearm in a packed mall.

The first rule of guns is to always assume that the weapon is loaded until you personally see otherwise. Only the guy with the holster on his hip sitting on the bar stool knows for sure whether there’s a round in the chamber. That’s a recipe for a bloody disaster.

“This bill was the No.1 priority of police chiefs,” Portantino says. “Law enforcement officers are at risk because they have to approach every person with a weapon as if it’s loaded. They believe it’s just a matter of time before one of those weapons is discharged.

“It’s an unnecessary waste of police resources and an unnecessarily tense situation.... You don’t need a gun to buy a cheeseburger. You need a $5 bill.”

Brown is a proud gun owner — of a shotgun, a .22 rifle and a .38 police special, all inherited. He plinks at his ancestral ranch near Colusa. His father, former Gov. Pat Brown, advised him that: “In California, you don’t mess with a man’s car or his guns.”

But we’ve messed with cars and guns a lot since Pat Brown’s day. And California is better off for it.

Jerry Brown should honor Wyatt Earp and sign the bill.

• Baby sitters. AB 101 by Assembly Speaker John Pérez (D-Los Angeles). It would allow the unionization of home-based child-care workers who receive state subsidies for looking after poor kids.

Don’t call them baby sitters, sponsoring Democrats protested; that’s insulting.

Regardless of what they’re called, opposing Republicans correctly declared: This bill is a Democratic payoff to the unions who hope to begin collecting dues from up to 100,000 — call them what they are — baby sitters.

It’s crazy. State government is still running on fumes — spending more than it’s taking in — and Democrats think Sacramento can afford more for baby-sitting? And if the state can’t pay for the inevitably higher wages that would result from unionizing, who will? The single mom who’s already barely making it?

What happens when the mom can’t go to work that day because her baby sitter is on strike?

“It’s too much government, and it’s too heavy-handed,” Assemblyman Donald Wagner (R-Irvine) said during the debate.

Assemblyman Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber) warned: “Folks will ask, ‘What in the world are those people in Sacramento thinking about?’”

The bill is unnecessary, a public nuisance and nuts.

Brown should veto it with relish.

• Initiatives. SB 202 by Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley). It would place all future citizen initiatives and referendums on a November general election ballot. No longer could they qualify for a June primary.

Additionally, a proposed state spending cap/rainy day fund that the Legislature had placed on the June 2012 ballot wouldn’t go to voters until November 2014.

This is blatant politics at its rankest. Significantly more voters turn out in general elections than in primaries. And larger turnouts tend to favor Democrats and their causes. Conditions in the primary next June couldn’t be much worse for Democrats because only Republicans will be drawn to the polls by a presidential nominating contest.

Labor is especially worried about two measures: the spending cap and the possibility of a so-called paycheck protection initiative that would make it tougher for unions to spend members’ dues on politics.

OK, the motives are clear. But I learned long ago not to fret much about political motives. It’s the resulting public policy that counts. And moving initiatives to November makes good policy sense.

If we’re going to have direct democracy, it should be exercised by the most voters possible, not by a small minority.

Moreover, the state Constitution requires initiatives to be submitted to voters “at the next general” or special election. Not primary. Somehow, we got away from that a few decades ago.

As for the immediate need of a rainy day fund, the state doesn’t have any money to put in it anyway. If any windfall revenue does emerge, it should be used to retire debt.

Brown should hold his nose and sign.

george.skelton@latimes.com