FBI raid highlights need for reform

SACRAMENTO — When federal agents raided state Sen. Ron Calderon’s Capitol office last week, it jogged memories of the FBI’s sweeping Shrimpscam sting 25 years ago.

Fourteen politicos — legislators, lobbyists, staffers — were convicted in the scandal that prompted voters to impose term limits on elected state officials.

We still don’t know, as of this writing, precisely what the latest raid was all about. All we really know is that agents carted off several boxes.

It apparently involved a U.S. attorney’s suspicion about Calderon, a Democrat from Montebello, and his brother, former Assemblyman Tom Calderon. Ron authored legislation on behalf of a water district that had consulting contracts with Tom.

Also, Tom was paid big bucks by some healthcare companies that got help in the Legislature last year from Ron and another brother, then-Assemblyman Chuck Calderon.

The Calderon family long has been prominent politically in Los Angeles County and occasionally has drawn scrutiny for overlapping politics and finances. The clan now includes a new assemblyman, Ian Calderon of Whittier, Chuck’s son.

The raid apparently was a surprise to every lawmaker except Ron Calderon. He didn’t show up for work in the Capitol on Monday and Tuesday. But celebrity attorney Mark Geragos was available to speak for him by telephone immediately after the Tuesday evening raid.

“The government is out of control,” Geragos asserted, seemingly targeting his words at potential jurors. It “should be ashamed.”

When a high-profile attorney suddenly pops up, I tend to think there’s a fire burning.

But this investigation doesn’t seem to be rising — or sinking — to the level of Shrimpscam. Then, federal agents created a fake shrimp processing operation and lured legislators into accepting bribes to support a bill enabling the phony enterprise.

Ironically, that FBI probe was urged by Assembly Republican Leader Pat Nolan of Glendale. He convinced the Reagan administration Justice Department that Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco was vulnerable to stinging. But it was Nolan, among others, who got stung and went to prison. Brown wasn’t touched.

“Always assume everyone in the Capitol is wearing a wire,” Brown famously cautioned Democrats.

The current probe appears to be confined to the Calderon brothers.

And upon hearing about it, besides Shrimpscam, I immediately thought of what legendary Speaker Jesse Unruh used to say, years after leaving the Legislature.

Unruh, who became state treasurer, would shake his head in amazement at the seemingly sensible souls who would get elected and, after arriving in the Capitol, believe they had become invisible. They’d be pampered by perks, toadied over by lobbyists and lulled into the delusion that no ordinary folks could see their carryings-on.

Robert Hertzberg — former Assembly speaker-turned-political reformer who plans to run next year for the state Senate — basically agrees with Unruh.

“You get up there and everybody’s telling you how good you look, that you’re doing a great job, that you’re the best in the world,” he says, “and you start believing it. You’re living in this Capitol bubble. It can get you in trouble.”

But Hertzberg doesn’t think corruption now is pervasive in the Capitol.

“There’s very little,” he asserts. “You don’t see the kinds of corruption there was in the ‘70s. And things done in the ‘60s with Unruh would never be done today. People coming to homes with envelopes of cash. It’s a different world.”

Agreed. Powerful lobbyists, for example, aren’t hanging out in the Senate leader’s office playing poker and monitoring conversations as they were when Democrat Hugh Burns was president pro tem back in the so-called good ol’ days.

But using a broad definition of corruption, there’s plenty of it going on legally today. There may be little if any bribery or graft, but there are subtler influences of moneyed special interests that corrupt decision-making.

Interests such as labor, insurance, oil and Indian tribes grease lawmakers’ hands with political money. And politicians only insult the public’s intelligence when they claim it doesn’t sway votes — or gubernatorial action.

The solution could be public financing of state campaigns, with politicians then being bought by the public instead of the special interests. But voters oppose that. And Supreme Court rulings have reduced its potential effectiveness.

Another reform would be to eliminate the various pots of money — the slush funds, the legal defense accounts, the charitable kitties — that special interests fill to solicit lawmakers’ favors.

Fundraising also could be banned while the Legislature is in session, as advocated by Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and a former chairman of the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

“Human nature being what it is,” Schnur says, “if I write a large check six months before an important committee vote, it’s not going to have the same impact as if I write it the night before.”

“Also, one thing is indisputable,” he adds. “It would free up more time for legislators to do the job they were elected to do.”

Responds Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento): “It’s an idea we ought to take seriously.”

You could ban all special interest gifts to legislators. That would eliminate such freebies as golf junkets and foreign jaunts.

Ron Calderon has taken roughly $40,000 worth of gifts since 2000, more than double any other legislator, the Sacramento Bee reported. He’s chairman of the Senate Insurance Committee, one of the Legislature’s coveted “juice” committees that attract special interest largesse.

“Political scandal is very good for the political reform business,” Schnur notes.

Problem is, there’s not much market for reform inside the Capitol. It’ll probably require citizen action with a ballot initiative.

george.skelton@latimes.com