Seniority Paying Off : County Starts to Flex Muscle in Sacramento

Like a baseball team on the verge of contention but always falling a little short, “Wait ‘til next year” seems to be the most often heard battle cry for San Diego’s interests in the state capital.

As each legislative session comes to a close, San Diego’s lawmakers and the public’s lobbyists look back and ponder how close they came to victory on the issues that affect San Diegans.

Now, as the 1987-88 session of the Legislature gets under way, San Diego’s delegation here--still considered less powerful than might be expected from the state’s second-largest county in population--may be coming into its own. With added experience and placements on key legislative committees boosting their stature, the four senators and seven Assembly members say they are looking forward to the session.

“I think, as time goes by, the delegation is becoming more of a formidable force because we have positions of seniority that help us a great deal,” said William Craven, the Oceanside Republican who is the dean of San Diego’s Senate contingent. “Time has a way of helping you.”

That added punch helped the city and county governments and the region’s institutions win battles on several key pieces of legislation affecting San Diegans during the 1985-86 session. Measures passed by the Legislature in the last two years could end up improving the lives of commuters, university students and just about anyone who favors locking up more of the county’s criminals. Also affected by the legislation were consumers, mobile-home owners, welfare recipients, and peddlers of sex-oriented literature, or, conversely, those who are offended by such material.

On some issues, such as the control of sewage flowing across the border from Mexico, San Diego made headway but could not claim total success.

In other matters--funding for the county’s drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, for instance--San Diego once again came up short.

Determined not to give up, the county and city governments have again adopted those issues as legislative goals.

The sewage issue is a good example of San Diego’s tendency to put the best light on what others might view as a defeat.

Originally, San Diego was seeking to place a $150-million bond measure on the November ballot to provide funds to build a sewage treatment plant in or near Tijuana and to take immediate steps to clean up sewage and toxic contaminants flowing into San Diego and Imperial counties from Mexico.

As the summer wore on, the sewage bond measure, in a bill by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), got caught up in partisan squabbling. In negotiations, backers agreed to limit the bond measure to $100 million and to delay its placement on the state ballot until 1988.

But in the end, those compromises were not enough, and the measure died as the legislative session ended. San Diego backers of the measure remained hopeful to the end, even suggesting that the border sewage measure might become a bargaining chip in the legislative squabble over a prison in Los Angeles County.

The Legislature did pass a bill creating an International Border Pollution Control Authority, an 11-member governing board to plan and operate the sewage facilities that the bond election would finance. But first the Legislature stripped the measure of $1.3 million in operating funds, and then Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed the remaining provisions, saying it was “unnecessary to create a new bureaucracy that will duplicate the efforts” of the state and regional water quality control boards, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Still, Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista) said he was happy with the progress the San Diegans were able to make on the issue during the legislative session.

“We started from below zero two years ago and have made border sewage a statewide issue, at the top of the agenda,” Peace said. “That’s a gigantic leap.”

John Witzel, who lobbies the Legislature for San Diego, took a more sober view. “The biggest disappointment is that we have not convinced people up and down the state of the significance of the Tijuana sewage issue,” Witzel said.

Here are some of the session’s highlights from a San Diego point of view:

- Obscenity. The city won passage of a bill, authored by Sen. Wadie Deddeh (D-Chula Vista), to change the state’s definition of obscenity in an effort to make it easier to prosecute publishers of sex-oriented films, books and magazines.

The bill changed the definition of obscenity from matter “utterly without redeeming social importance” to matter which, taken as a whole, “lacks significant literary, artistic, political, educational or scientific value.”

- Transit. A bill by Deddeh created a special transportation taxing authority and gave it the power to collect an extra penny per dollar in sales tax, provided that a majority of San Diego voters approve such a measure. The tax increase could raise as much as $148 million a year to be spent on extensions of the San Diego Trolley and to build and maintain local roads.

- Jails. The county won permission to hold last month’s ill-fated election calling for a half-cent sales tax increase for new jails and courthouses. Though voters rejected the tax increase--barely giving it a majority when it needed two-thirds--the county did get about $35 million for various jail construction projects in another bill that doled out proceeds from a $495-million statewide bond issue approved by voters in June. The allocation was a dramatic improvement over the $20 million the county got from two earlier bond measures that totalled $631 million.

San Diego County officials had threatened to oppose the June bond issue unless the county was given a larger share of the most recent bond measure.

“Our Board of Supervisors said, ‘Hey folks, we are willing to upset the whole apple cart,’ ” said John Sweeten, who tracks legislation for the county government.

- Workfare. After a major battle, San Diego won a three-year extension of the workfare program, in which certain welfare recipients are required to work in exchange for their benefits. Three months after the extension was granted in June, 1985, legislators enacted a statewide program based on the San Diego experiment.

- San Diego State University. In June, 1985, the Legislature approved a $250,000 feasibility study for an SDSU campus in North County. The state university board of trustees is now negotiating to purchase property in San Marcos for the new campus.

- Air pollution. San Diego legislators, who for years had sought to maintain parity with Los Angeles and San Francisco on the state Air Resources Board, began last year’s battle facing an attempt to deny the county guaranteed representation on the panel. Eventually, the county emerged with continuous representation, which, according to Witzel, “puts us in the best position we’ve ever been in.”

- Holmwood Canyon. The county obtained $800,000 from the state Environmental License Plate Fund to go toward the purchase of this canyon on the edge of San Elijo Lagoon. The canyon had been scheduled for a 38-unit housing development before opposition from nearby residents persuaded the county to buy the land for park.

- Trash plant. A bill designed to block a still-stalled voter initiative over a proposed trash-burning energy plant in San Marcos passed the Legislature but was vetoed by Deukmejian. In one of the most intense environmental debates of the session, legislators failed to throw any serious roadblocks in the path of 33 trash-to-energy plants throughout the state, including proposed plants in San Marcos and Kearny Mesa.

- Famosa Slough. Attempts to stall a proposed condominium development on the Famosa Slough wetlands near Ocean Beach fell short. The Legislature stripped away Coastal Commission jurisdiction over the 20-acre marsh, despite the objections of Assemblywoman Lucy Killea, who represents the area. Legislative budget conferees rejected a subsequent attempt by Assemblyman Peace to give San Diego $2 million to buy the property.

- Coronado Bridge. News last year that the bonds for constructing the Coronado Bridge would be paid off 17 years ahead of time raised the hopes of local officials and several legislators who sought to tap the bridge’s $7.7 million in annual revenue for a long wish list of transportation projects. But last year, Deukmejian signed into law a bill by Sen. Jim Ellis (R-San Diego), restricting toll expenditures to “bridge operations, maintenance, rehabilitation and improvements, and improving the approaches to the bridge.” Now, state transportation officials are trying to decide whether they should lower the toll, probably to about 75 cents, sometime next year. On Thursday, the California Transportation Commission voted to keep the toll at $1.20 (for westbound traffic only) until July 1. Until then, the state Department of Transportation will analyze methods to ease traffic between the bridge and North Island Naval Air Station.

- Call boxes. In a bill by Craven, the county won permission to apply a surcharge to the motor vehicle registration fee to fund a network of emergency telephone call boxes along 580 miles of San Diego freeways. Another bill signed by the governor--by Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach)--will allow the county to stretch the dollars raised, by selling revenue bonds and installing the call boxes on credit.

- Whistle blowers. In response to complaints from employees at the county’s Hillcrest mental health hospital, Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego) won passage of legislation expanding protections to government workers who expose wrongdoing, corruption, waste or ineptness. The bill created one-year jail sentences and fines up to $10,000 for state and local officials who retaliate against so-called “whistle blowers.”

- Birds. In another bill by Stirling, the San Diego Assn. of Governments was awarded $300,000 from the Environmental License Plate Fund to develop a program for the preservation of the least Bell’s vireo, an endangered bird that nests in the path of California 52 through the Miramar area. Without the project to provide a new habitat for the bird, construction of the freeway would have been halted.

But the governor vetoed a bill by Killea expanding the California condor preservation project at the San Diego and Los Angeles zoos.

- New cities. In a move that officials say would save county government millions of dollars, the Legislature agreed that services provided by counties to newly incorporated cities would be considered interest-free loans to be repaid over five years. Currently, the counties must provide police protection, planning and public works services free for as long as a year. The measure awaits gubernatorial approval.

- Homeless. The Legislature passed a bill by Assemblyman Peter Chacon (D-San Diego) to create a state monitor over programs to assist the homeless and to appropriate $3 million for a San Diego County pilot project to coordinate state, county, federal and private efforts. Deukmejian signed the bill but decimated its effect by blue-penciling the money. Deukemejian said the state spends “more than $44 million for various homeless-related programs” and could not afford the expenditure.

- Equity funding. An unsuccessful bill by Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) would have given San Diego County dramatic increases in funding for its drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, lifting San Diego County to per capita spending levels equal to those in other California urban counties. The county is suing the state over funding inequities.

- Railroad crossings. A bill by Assemblyman Bill Bradley (R-San Marcos) that would have forced railroads to pay a larger share of repair and replacement costs for smooth-riding rubberized grade crossing was withdrawn early this year after the railroads resumed negotiations with city officials. But Witzel said the city may seek legislation again next year.