Big Labor’s Speaker

It’s no secret that Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) is friendly with the labor union movement in Los Angeles County. He came to politics through union activities. And Nunez won the speakership in part through his ability to raise campaign contributions from unions.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

That history, however, has led him to something that is clearly wrong, even if it is technically legal. He’s being paid $35,000 a year, personally, not as a campaign contribution, by a nonprofit arm of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which is led by Nunez’s old pal, Miguel Contreras.

The Assembly speaker is, even under term limits, the most powerful force in the Legislature (along with the Senate leader). It doesn’t pass the laugh test that Nunez is merely consulting on effective methods of voter registration.

As Times writer Matea Gold told us Monday, Nunez receives that $35,000 from the ostensibly independent Voter Improvement Program. In fact, the nonprofit was founded and is run by Contreras and other union officials. Its agenda hews to that of the labor federation, and although its stated purpose is to sign up new voters and educate voters, it also has supported ballot initiative campaigns backed by unions, such as the unsuccessful effort to retain bilingual education in public schools.

The Voter Improvement Program, founded in 1997, has raised about $5 million from a network of donors that includes organized labor, Hollywood studios, large corporations and even the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, a public agency.

Nunez started consulting for the organization in 1998, before he became speaker. Nunez says that when the Legislature is not meeting, he spends 10 to 15 hours a month providing “strategic advice” about voter trends and demographic patterns -- more in election years, less in the off years.

Whatever the details of the arrangement, there’s no avoiding the impression that Big Labor has the Assembly speaker on retainer as its lobbyist in chief in Sacramento. Steve Maviglio, Nunez’s communications director, noted that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger serves as executive editor of Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines. In exchange, the publisher donates $250,000 a year to a pet project, the California Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness. That smells too, even if multimillionaire Schwarzenegger does not receive any money himself.

But the big difference is that Muscle & Fitness does not have issues before the Legislature almost daily. No laws prohibit state legislators from holding outside employment while serving in the Legislature, as long as they don’t cast specific votes that pose a conflict of interest. Historically, many have maintained their law practices part time. Others have also worked as political consultants, a far more dubious practice.

But the speaker is paid more than other members, $113,850 a year plus expenses, in part because of the extra demands and responsibilities of his position.

The only thing more ill defined than what Nunez does for the money is the voter group’s “independence” from the labor federation. It’s a job Nunez can’t afford to keep.