Elective office improves a resume

As his tenure neared its end, state Sen. Joe Dunn sided with the California Medical Assn., one of the state’s most prestigious lobbying organizations, casting an emotionally charged vote this summer that derailed a bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide.

Three months later, the medical association announced that Dunn would be its new executive director. Dunn is not alone. The lobbyist and consultant corps is swelling with former lawmakers as term limits remove them from office.

This year, a third of the 120 legislators are leaving office. A few will retire. Others hope for government appointments. Some plan to run for other offices in two or four years. But many will seek lucrative jobs as consultants and lobbyists.

Where many former legislators land won’t be known for days or weeks. But 30 lawmakers who have left office since term limits took effect in the mid-1990s work as lobbyists, lawyers and consultants advising clients with interests in Sacramento.

They include former Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, an attorney, and former Assembly and Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte, a consultant. Former legislative staffers populate all the top Sacramento lobbying firms; four of the top 15 firms employ former legislators.

Although no one questions legislators’ right to work once they leave office, some experts raise questions about what standards should apply to job hunting.

“My concern is these lawmakers are thinking about where they are going to go next, and they don’t want to do anything while in office that would offend any potential employer,” said Robert Fellmeth of the Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego School of Law.

By law, legislators cannot lobby the Legislature for one year after they leave office, although they can lobby the executive branch. The law bars top administration officials from lobbying the administration for a year, though they can lobby legislators.

The California Fair Political Practices Commission has found relatively few violations of those lobbying prohibitions. Most have involved former bureaucrats who sought to do business in front of their former agencies.

Dunn, a Democrat from Santa Ana, is one of at least three current legislators who have landed jobs in recent weeks, though their terms won’t end until their replacements are sworn in on Dec. 4.

Another is Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier), an attorney who is joining the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, in Los Angeles, pending expected approval by its partners. The firm has a lobbying arm at the Capitol, representing insurance, pharmaceutical, energy and telecommunications concerns. Escutia is not expected to lobby.

The third is Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City), who was an entertainment attorney before entering the Legislature. He is rejoining a former employer, the William Morris Agency, the world’s largest talent agency. William Morris has no capital lobbying presence. But Murray’s addition “strengthens and diversifies” the agency’s reach, the firm said when it announced his hiring last month.

As a legislator, Murray chaired a select committee on the entertainment industry and regularly carried bills affecting the industry, including measures championed by recording artists Don Henley and the Dixie Chicks, who contended that music industry practices cheated them out of earnings.

In an interview, Murray said he wouldn’t take actions that would “rise to the level of lobbying.” But he said he would provide political counsel and hoped to continue playing a role in such issues as tax credits that would benefit Hollywood.

“I would certainly be available to give people political advice,” Murray said.

Escutia did not return calls. Dunn and Murray said they didn’t engage in talks with their employers until the legislative session concluded at the end of August. State law bars lawmakers from acting on measures affecting prospective employers while they are in talks about their future.

Dunn, Murray and Escutia were among the most sought-after of this exiting class, according to a Manatt lawyer who is involved in the recruiting process. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. Lawmakers are sought-after hires because they understand the arcane workings of the legislative process, the lawyer said.

Others view it slightly differently.

“Those of us who see how things work in Sacramento realize the field isn’t level at all, and it never will be,” said San Jose State University political scientist Larry N. Gerston. “Their value as former legislators is they know how to best manipulate the process for favorable results.”

As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reorganizes his operation for his second term, several of his aides are departing.

Most notably, Richard Costigan, Schwarzenegger’s legislative affairs secretary, announced that he is joining the law firm McKenna, Long & Aldridge in its new Sacramento office.

The firm has several former state and federal officials working in its various offices. Costigan, a lawyer, had been a lobbyist before joining the administration.

Lobbying is generally defined as seeking to influence decision makers by having contact with them -- by, for example, talking to them, appearing at hearings or writing letters advocating a position. Lobbyists must register with the secretary of state’s office and file public reports disclosing their clients, the amounts their clients pay them and the legislation they seek to influence.

Former Democratic Sen. Richard Polanco of Los Angeles, termed out in 2002, now is a lobbyist; he has reported billings of $210,000 so far this year.

Other former officials avoid disclosure requirements by stopping short of actual lobbying. Instead, they act as consultants, advising clients and their clients’ lobbyists. Attorneys don’t have to register either, so long as they are not lobbying.

The Los Angeles Unified School District disclosed that it paid $35,000 to former Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, a lawyer and San Francisco Democrat, to help it resist a law giving Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa more control over schools.

Former Republican leader Brulte, termed out in 2004, is a consultant at California Strategies, a firm whose clients include oil, insurance, healthcare companies and a community college coalition.

The Times obtained an internal memo from the coalition saying it paid Brulte $50,000 in 2004 for a two-month consulting contract to get more state aid. The memo referred to his connections with the Schwarzenegger administration, saying: “The task ... can be daunting without a seasoned insider working on behalf of our issues.”

Escutia “is not being hired to be a lobbyist,” the Manatt lawyer said. “Obviously, she may consult on state government matters as appropriate, but we didn’t hire her to be a lobbyist.”

Escutia was chairwoman of the Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee, which has jurisdiction of energy-related matters and telecommunications.

Manatt’s billings of $4.2 million since January 2005 place it 13th among all Sacramento lobby firms. Its clients include telecommunications giant AT&T;, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and BHP Billiton, which has been Manatt’s largest lobbying client at $2.4 million since January 2005. Billiton is an Australian company competing to build a liquefied natural gas facility off the coast of Oxnard. Environmentalists have fought the plan.

Escutia has not always voted on Manatt’s side. She sponsored legislation, for example, that Billiton opposed. In other instances, she sided with interests represented by Manatt, backing, for instance, a bill championed by AT&T; allowing the company to enter the cable television business.

In many instances, legislators returning to private jobs can expect pay hikes beyond the current legislative pay of $110,888 a year.

Dunn’s salary as the medical association’s executive director is not known. However, his predecessor earned $342,000 in 2004, the most recent year for which records are available.

“No, I’m not at that level. I wish I was,” Dunn said.

Dunn made his name as a trial attorney and was among the lawyers who helped organize the national suit against the tobacco industry in the 1990s.

Siding with the 35,000-member medical association, Dunn voted against legislation that would have legalized assisted suicide. Dunn cast the deciding vote at a June 27 committee hearing, effectively derailing the bill for the year. Now critics of his vote question the timing.

“The sequence of events is troubling,” said Tom McDonald, 76, a melanoma patient who testified on behalf of the legislation. “That vote could have been one heck of a job interview.”

Dunn said such “suspicion is absolutely, positively false.” He said he had no discussions with the medical association until the Legislature adjourned.

Peter Warren, spokesman for the medical association, also dismissed the idea, saying the organization interviewed several finalists. Any suggestion that Dunn was hired because of one vote or another “is a conspiracy theory that doesn’t fit the facts.”

dan.morain@latimes.com

evan.halper@latimes.com