Patronage for sale

Megabucks Inc. is sponsoring a bill in Sacramento that would save it millions of dollars in taxes and regulatory fees and give it a huge advantage over competitors. But for the bill to pass, the company must buy the support of the Assembly speaker, so it gives his reelection campaign $7,200 -- the maximum amount allowed by law.

But that’s nothing. Everyone with a bill to push is giving the speaker $7,200. So the company’s lobbyist just comes right out and asks: “Hey, Mr. Speaker, what else do you want?” Like any politician worth his salt, the speaker wants power and adulation. He and the company hatch a plan to funnel thousands of dollars to a charity.

The speaker keeps his hands on the money by telling the charity how to spend it. There’s the power. And he gets the charitable fund or event or whatever named after him. There’s the adulation (and future votes for mayor, or whatever else he may be running for). All purchased for him by a company with a very special interest pending before him.

Now compare this scenario: Megabucks Inc. and its rich corporate officers and directors donate millions of dollars every year (while taking tax deductions) to elite institutions like art museums and opera companies, but give next to nothing to the people who really need help: the working poor and their kids who live in the speaker’s home district. The speaker is exasperated. When the company asks if he has any suggestions for how to spread its charitable largesse, he quickly directs them to organizations that will give toys and college scholarships to the needy.

Whether the first scenario or the second more aptly describes Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez’s arrangement with Collective Space Inc., as reported Friday by Times staff writers Nancy Vogel and Evan Halper, is open to debate -- but only up to a point. People in the political world must come to terms with a fact that is obvious to people outside it: Political support should not be for sale, even when the price is something laudable, like Christmas gifts or kids’ soccer tournaments.

Of course, people outside the political world need to get a grip on reality as well. There is very little public money available these days to meet the needs of struggling Californians, and lots of political money. Pairing the neediest people with the available money is part of an elected official’s job -- if he isn’t using the transaction for his own aggrandizement.

That’s where Nunez makes a close case easy. It’s great that kids got iPods and airline tickets. It’s not so great that his office, rather than the charity, dictated what events his corporate and labor donors paid for, or that they were advertised as “Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez’s Toy Drive,” “Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez’s Soccerfest 2006” and “Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez’s Inaugural Legislative Youth Conference.” The speaker, and the many lawmakers who engage in similar practices, stand on the wrong side of the line that divides conscientious constituent support and blatant, discredited political patronage.