New Assemblymen Plunge Into a Flurry of Legislative Activity

On Nov. 4, Los Angeles County voters sent two new representatives to the state Assembly in Sacramento--Democrat Terry B. Friedman of Los Angeles and Republican Paul E. Zeltner of Lakewood. They agreed to help The Times keep a diary of their first months in office.

Zeltner, 61, a Lakewood city councilman and former sheriff’s captain, waged an underdog campaign to capture the heavily Democratic 54th Assembly District. He campaigned on a law-and-order platform. Friedman, 37, a former legal aid attorney in West Los Angeles, breezed into office with a liberal social agenda for his upscale 43rd Assembly District.

In their first three months in office, they struggled to grasp the new routine, win committee assignments and set priorities in the Capitol and back home.

In this, the second of two articles, they turn their attention to legislative action.

Week of MARCH 2

Terry Friedman is smiling, standing on the rugged lip of Mission Canyon, high in the Santa Monica Mountains.

It is a cool, overcast morning as he unveils his first major bill, a measure to ban landfill operations in a 155,000-acre chunk of mountains. Kept under wraps until now, the bill is getting an impressive send-off; supporters at a press conference include Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and several Westside elected officials.

As TV cameras focus on a small lectern, Friedman tells scribbling reporters that county officials want to resume trash dumping in Mission Canyon, a former landfill now designated as federal recreation land. He describes it as “sheer insanity . . . to place a garbage dump so close to homes, schools, churches and synagogues.”

The measure soon vaults Friedman into the headlines, but it draws an icy reception from county officials, who are desperately searching for new dumps to handle the county’s huge daily volume of trash. They accuse Friedman of trying to protect affluent Westside communities at the expense of other regions that handle garbage.

Says one staffer, Mark Volmert of Supervisor Pete Schabarum’s office: “To throw it in somebody else’s backyard is absolutely unacceptable and political hypocrisy.”

Shortly before noon on Thursday, the Assembly reaches a crucial vote in a push to restore Medi-Cal funding. Democrats, needing 54 votes, get 43 of their own votes and 10 from Republicans, including Zeltner. Now one vote short, and with the roll call open, they put heavy lobbying pressure on remaining Republicans.

Momentarily, one Republican member agrees to be that vote, prompting GOP leaders to call a hasty caucus. Afterward, the key Republican withdraws her vote, and the funding cuts stand.

“The worst day so far,” a frustrated Friedman says. “It was painfully obvious the governor’s marching orders were drilled into the (Republican) leadership. They would allow 10 votes for it--for constituents or whatever--but when push came to shove they were never going to allow that (funding) bill to pass.”

The deadline arrives for introducing legislation. Zeltner proposes 33 bills and resolutions, Friedman 28.

As a member of the Republican minority, Zeltner can expect to have difficulty getting major proposals adopted by the Democrat-controlled Assembly. However, as a member of the governor’s party, he can anticipate being asked to carry bills for various state agencies.

For example, one of Zeltner’s bills has been introduced for the Department of Mental Health. It is aimed at closing a loophole in state law dealing with criminal suspects who are found incompetent to stand trial or judged not guilty by reason of insanity. Each year in California, about 400 such suspects are treated as outpatients at state hospitals, and about 10 flee the state, which cannot extradite them because they have not been convicted of a crime.

The bill--expected to win easy passage, according to one mental-health spokesman--is typical for Zeltner. Nearly half of his measures are tied to crime issues; several would toughen prison sentences.

But he realizes that the road for such legislation is often difficult, particularly when it reaches the Public Safety Committee. That committee, whose Democratic majority traditionally has been stacked with liberals, is regarded as a graveyard of tough anti-crime bills.

“People say I’m wasting my time,” Zeltner acknowledges.

Week of MARCH 9

The pace picks up as more bills are heard in committees. Zeltner says there’s plenty of background reading on issues, but he has a hard time squeezing it in at night “because by the time you get finished with receptions and get home you’re pretty well tired.”

Friedman also is putting in long hours, often eating breakfast and lunch at his cluttered desk and occasionally working well into the night.

Friedman’s goal now is to plot legislative strategy. Which committees should hear his bills? Who will testify to support them? In one key move, he persuades a Republican, Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette of Northridge, to sign on as the co-author of his bill banning landfills in the Santa Monica Mountains. She will help give the bill important bipartisan support.

Friedman’s close friend, Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles), often offers advice between meetings, on rides to the airport and at night at Margolin’s condominium, which they share in Sacramento. Margolin explains: “There’s a lot I had to learn from painful trial and error, and I want him to avoid some of the pitfalls.”

Zeltner has no such tutor. In Sacramento, Zeltner says, “I have a hell of a lot of acquaintances but few friends.”

Zeltner has embarked on what many consider a traditional course for newcomers, starting with relatively non-controversial proposals and leaving more contentious issues for later in the session.

David Nagler, a lobbyist for the California Public Defenders Assn., says Zeltner reflects a “non-dogmatic approach to laws affecting crime and defendants. He is, from a liberal’s point of view, conservative on issues. He favors lengthening of (prison) terms . . . (but) he makes every effort to recognize our point of view.”

Friedman, meanwhile, is more inclined to attack broad social issues, to favor greater state involvement in the lives of people. Lectured by one conservative Republican that California should run like a private corporation, Friedman later mutters, “That’s not exactly the way I see it.”

Friedman looks at issues in a “larger, universal sense . . . rather than (in) specific instances,” Nagler says. “Ninety percent of the bills introduced are because a particular event occurred in a district. Friedman steps back from the particular incident . . . to see how it impacts the system as a whole.”

Although his early game plan was to avoid carrying major bills during the difficult months of learning the system, Friedman has taken on two unusually challenging measures, the Santa Monica Mountains landfill bill and a proposal to ban liquor licenses for private clubs that bar women and minorities.

Friedman jokes to a reporter: “You’ll probably watch me go down in flames.”

Week of MARCH 16

Zeltner says he can’t even say whether he is for or against some of his own bills “because of the legalese” in the versions drafted by the legislative counsel’s office.

“All we do is give them an idea. . . . Sometimes they misconstrue what you’re after.” For example, Zeltner says he sought to revise a portion of the Medi-Cal program to allow relatives to chip in extra money on behalf of elderly relatives who need long-term health care. Instead, Zeltner moans, the draft of the measure “was so broad you’d have to revise the whole Medi-Cal payment system.”

Difficulties with the bill prompt Zeltner to delay its consideration until next year.

Friedman is more concerned about the analyses of bills that are prepared by committee staff members. Those analyses, used by committee members to understand the pros and cons of pending legislation, often arrive less than a day in advance, leaving almost no time to read them. “It’s frustrating,” he says. “It’s a terrible problem. . . .”

Week of APRIL 6

Friedman is in Los Angeles for his first fund-raising dinner as an assemblyman. But on the afternoon of the event, scheduled at the swank Beverly Hills Hotel, his wife Elise arrives home to find him in bed with a fever.

He thinks that he’s catching the flu.

But they dress for the dinner and join about 400 guests, including master of ceremonies Margolin. Dinner is a choice of white fish or filet mignon. Friedman, who even manages to make a speech, raises more than $95,000.

“That went real well,” he says later. “I’m glad to have that done.”

The fever is gone before dessert. “I really think it was nerves,” his wife says. “I think he was just uncomfortable.”

Week of APRIL 13

Weeks after requesting additional furniture for his Bellflower office, Zeltner is still wondering where it is. In Sacramento, Friedman’s staff, which has already moved twice, is again packing boxes. The Rules Committee has found him a three-room, fifth-floor office that is slightly larger than the one he has occupied for seven weeks.

Friedman’s once-philosophical mood about office changes is gone. “Here we are in the fourth month of the session and they’re still moving people around,” he says bitterly. “I just think that’s ridiculous.”

Packing and moving are unwelcome distractions at a time when Friedman faces his toughest legislative decision yet. La Follette, the Republican co-author of his landfill measure, has asked him to expand the bill to protect canyons ringing the San Fernando Valley. To deny the request could cause her to drop out as the bill’s co-author, which could cost him crucial Republican support.

“It makes the bill much more a frontal attack on landfills,” he says, but he adds the amendment.

Week of APRIL 20

All session long, legislators have been preparing bills and lining up support. Now they plunge headlong into committee hearings, where the action is often unpredictable.

Zeltner’s bill on extradition of runaway mental patients--a sure thing, he thought--is rejected by the Assembly Committee on Public Safety by a 3-1 vote. “He wanted to create a new crime,” Nagler, the public defenders lobbyist, says later. “We objected to that because of overcrowding in the courts and jails and (because) these are mental patients.”

As a courtesy, the committee tells Zeltner that it will reconsider his proposal.

In another hearing room, Friedman finds himself at a lectern, trying to decide whether to accept an amendment that may save a bill to tighten controls on insurance companies. He is concerned that the amendment might severely weaken the bill but decides to accept it.

“I’ve never before had to make a decision in such a split second on a matter of such consequence,” he says later. “I just looked at the (committee members) to try to read their faces. . . . It’s a rather imperfect way to make a decision.”

Week of APRIL 27

Friedman brings the landfill bill before the Natural Resources Committee, where the hourlong debate centers on trash logistics (where should it go?) and governmental control (is trash disposal a state or regional issue?).

After the roll call, Friedman has six votes out of nine. He is one vote short.

As the committee moves on to other issues, Friedman moves behind the dais to lobby Assemblyman Bill Leonard of Redlands, a Republican who abstained because he had not studied the issue. Quietly, so his voice won’t interfere with the committee’s discussion of another bill, Leonard expresses his concern that the bill could create pressure for new dumps in his own San Bernardino County district.

Friedman assures him that it won’t. Leaving the dais, Friedman waits for a new roll call. Leonard joins a 7-2 majority and the bill passes. Next stop is the Ways and Means Committee.

Week of MAY 4

Zeltner cobbles together a compromise on his mental-health bill. Instead of establishing a new crime, the measure stops at giving the state authority to extradite a runaway mental patient. The measure wins approval on a 4-0 vote.

Watching the legislative process has given Zeltner a new view of his colleagues. Criticizing them earlier as “rude” for arriving late to meetings, he now says, “Hey, they’re still rude around here but . . . every blasted one of them is working their buns off, every one of them. So I’ve gained a healthy respect for their efforts in that area.”

Week of MAY 11

Friedman’s liquor license bill is drawing heavy fire from club lobbyists. Just before its first hearing, he gets a boost as the U. S. Supreme Court bans discrimination at certain kinds of clubs. Friedman asks for more time so he can amend his bill based on the ruling.

In another room of the Capitol, Zeltner joins Assemblyman Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach) for a press conference on Frizzelle’s bill to make it easier for school officials to search student lockers. The state Supreme Court had ruled that school officials must show a “reasonable suspicion” of illegal activity before searching students or their lockers for drugs or weapons. Zeltner contends that the state law enables drug dealers to “operate with impunity,” giving “sanctuary status” to lockers.

The Frizzelle-Zeltner proposal is almost a mirror opposite of a Friedman bill that would make it more difficult for school officials to search student lockers. Friedman’s bill also would prevent those officials from conducting strip searches or body-cavity searches of students.

Week of MAY 18

Zeltner is spending much of his time on district affairs, attending social events and anti-drug rallies and seeking state funds for parks and other pet projects. Soon he will open a second district office in Compton.

He confronts a serious problem that some of his constituents in eastern Lakewood are experiencing. Homes are crumbling at the foundations from excessive sulfate in the soil, and Zeltner appeals to Gov. George Deukmejian for state emergency loans or other aid to homeowners.

In a Capitol hearing room, Zeltner watches the Frizzelle school locker bill hit an early roadblock, rejected by a 3-3 committee vote.

Friedman, meanwhile, is nearing a second hearing on his liquor license bill. Opponents have flooded the committee office with about 4,800 pre-printed cards and 22 letters urging defeat of the measure. Lobbying by phone, Friedman realizes that he is still short of votes and pulls the bill from the agenda.

Flying south, Friedman plans to spend Thursday lobbying the Los Angeles City Council to support his Santa Monica Mountains measure.

But that effort also runs into difficulty. On Thursday, he discovers, most council members are not at City Hall, they’re at far-flung district offices. On Friday, when the council convenes to take a position on the bill, Friedman is back in Sacramento for a key vote on a major abortion measure.

His absence is noted by the council, which debates trash issues for nearly two hours. The sharply divided council fails to take a stance on Friedman’s proposal.

Chiding the new assemblyman, Councilman John Ferraro says, “We delayed (discussion of) this bill a week so he could be here, and then he doesn’t show up.”

Week of MAY 25

Zeltner’s bill on mental patients hits another snag as critics contend that there is a constitutional issue at stake. They are asking, “How can you bring someone back (to California) who has not committed a crime?”

Zeltner recalls that the question was first raised by a committee consultant. “I thought we had corrected” all the problems, he says, but concedes that that one “was overlooked.” Zeltner hints that he may shelve the measure for this year. “So, I’m learning stupid little things like this that take a lot of extra time and effort and cloud the issue. . . . To me it’s a technical problem.”

Meanwhile, Friedman receives good news from Los Angeles. The City Council, meeting again to discuss his landfill measure, agrees to throw lobbying support behind it.

Week of JUNE 1

Six weeks before the summer recess, the volume of bills puts a strain on the legislative machinery. Lawmakers perform juggling acts, keeping watch on their districts, listening to the pleas of Capitol lobbyists and special-interest groups and shepherding bills through committees.

Hearing rooms look like crowded train stations. Bills are just beginning to trickle from one house to another, and a few are sent to the governor.

In the Assembly, hundreds of bills pour through the Ways and Means Committee, where all money-related measures are handled. Urged on by other Republicans, Zeltner pushes his mental-health bill for a vote. It falls two votes short.

Friedman also hits a roadblock with his landfill bill. Unexpected opposition comes from Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and other inner-city lawmakers from Los Angeles, who fear that the landfill ban in the Santa Monica Mountains may encourage development of huge trash incinerators in their districts.

After much haggling, Friedman is short of votes and is standing outside the meeting room, talking strategy with Margolin. Two hours later, they still can’t get the needed votes. Friedman asks the committee to strike the losing vote from the record and to reconsider the measure later in the month.

Week of JUNE 8

After two delays, Friedman’s liquor license bill has missed a May 22 deadline to win a committee vote. He now must seek a waiver from the Rules Committee, a routine request usually granted as a courtesy among lawmakers, who like to allow a bill to pass or fail on its own merits.

This time, however, Friedman is inexplicably turned down. “That just doesn’t happen--but it happened to us,” one aide says in disbelief. Friedman can only speculate that a lobbyist opposing the bill has persuaded some members of the Rules Committee to take a hard-line stance on Assembly rules.

The decision could mean the death of the bill for the year.

Meanwhile, in the crush of business before the Ways and Means Committee, Zeltner’s bill on runaway mental patients mistakenly is amended again to make runaways criminals.

Friedman’s landfill bill fails, 11 to 6, falling one vote short of passage. Bill Leonard, the Redlands Republican who was swayed by Friedman’s lobbying efforts at the earlier committee hearing, defects to the opposition. He is still concerned over future landfill sites.

Vowing to try again, a disappointed Friedman has cause for excitement on another front. A Democrat on the Rules Committee has agreed to alter his stance and support Friedman’s waiver request. His liquor license bill is revived.

“Things here are always changing,” Friedman remarks with satisfaction. “I’m learning not to be startled.”

Week of JUNE 15

After much discussion with committee members, Zeltner and the Department of Mental Health decide to go back to an earlier version of the bill concerning runaway mental patients, giving the state authority to extradite runaways without making the runaways criminals.

“Whether it has or hasn’t constitutional problems is a matter of opinion,” Zeltner says, adding that he is prepared to take his chances.

Back in his district, Zeltner is still waiting to find out what Deukmejian plans to do about the houses with crumbling foundations. Zeltner’s staff also puts the final touches, getting phones installed, on a second district office in Compton.

Week of JUNE 22

The mental-health bill passes the Assembly on a 72-4 vote and goes to the Senate. Zeltner is surprised there was no discussion, saying he can’t believe that thorny constitutional issues were not raised again.

Elsewhere in the Capitol, Friedman’s landfill measure, his top legislative priority, is shelved for the year by the Ways and Means Committee.

The action comes on a 10-9 vote--three votes short of passage--despite nearly two hours of last-ditch lobbying efforts in the hearing room. The defeat, only days after Mayor Bradley had killed plans for trash-incineration projects in Los Angeles, is a crushing blow for Friedman and his mountain preservation efforts.

He leaves the Capitol about 9 p.m., joining a handful of other Democrats for a backyard barbecue. It is a night of supportive sympathy, a chance to bolster sagging spirits. “A good place to go,” Friedman says later.

“He just ran into a buzz saw,” comments one barbecue guest, Assemblyman Tom Bates (D-Oakland). “That’s not unusual for freshmen. He’s “finding out the hard way not everything goes through right away.”

The following day, Thursday, is a climactic one for the Assembly as it races to beat the deadline for sending bills to the Senate. Friedman has only three bills on the lengthy docket, including his watered-down bill on student searches, which no longer addresses the issue of school lockers.

Zeltner has just two bills pending, one to expand police powers to confiscate weapons, another to encourage state loans to small businesses.

Anticipating an all-day ordeal, Zeltner brings his orthopedic desk chair to the Assembly floor, hoping to ease the burden on his damaged neck and spine, which were injured years ago in a fall from a horse.

The meeting convenes at precisely 9:31 and runs on into the night, ending at 2:30 Friday morning. In all, about 250 bills are approved or defeated. Friedman’s and Zeltner’s bills pass, but it’s difficult to get overly excited about it.

“I swear that I probably would not have been able to get up and walk away from there had I not had my chair,” Zeltner says, criticizing the Assembly for allowing bills to stack up until the final day. Such a marathon session “just doesn’t make sense,” he says.

Zeltner gets to bed at 3:20 a.m., oversleeps and nearly misses a 6 a.m. flight to San Diego, where he is addressing the Society of California Anesthesiologists. A grinning Zeltner later recalls his remarks to the group that the extended Assembly session was a “classic example of conscious sedation.”

After seven months, the rookie lawmakers describe their new world as difficult, challenging and often frustrating. Zeltner, for instance, has yet to get financial aid for the Lakewood constituents whose house foundations are crumbling.

His Bellflower office has received some of its overdue furniture but eight chairs have yet to arrive.

Still, it’s an exhilarating time--full of promise. Zeltner uncharacteristically bubbles: “Beyond my wildest dreams, I can pick up the phone and call the governor and he answers.”

Friedman talks with disappointment about the landfill measure, which will require a lot of additional work next year to resurrect. Reflecting on the last few difficult weeks, he says, “Intellectually, I expected it, but that doesn’t ease the difficulty and the strain of it . . . the pressure of it.”

Overall, they enjoyed mixed results. More than half of Zeltner’s legislation--especially on such law-and-order issues as allowing non-unanimous juries--is stalled in committee until next year. One bill aimed at making technical language changes in the state’s retirement system has been signed by the governor, but it’s such a small measure that he doesn’t even ask for a bill-signing ceremony as most freshmen do with their first successful bill.

Two other Zeltner bills have been sent to the governor. Ten have been approved by the Assembly and forwarded to the Senate.

Friedman’s mid-year score card shows him still facing a hearing Tuesday on his liquor license bill and summer committee hearings on three other measures. Fourteen of his bills are now in the Senate; 10 have been held over until January. None has been sent to Deukmejian.

In pushing bills through the Legislature, Friedman has found a “hard-nosed quality” in the way business is conducted. It is “not a warm and nurturing environment by any means,” he says. But he likes the job. It has grown on him, he says, even as it has grown more difficult.

“I always feel I’m in a hurry, even when I’m not working,” Friedman says, “just because I’m so used to . . . being in a constant hurry. I literally run down the halls . . . up there (in Sacramento) to get to one thing or another.”

Zeltner concedes that the tempo is “much faster . . . much more demanding” than he had anticipated. He says he is not sure if he will ever become accustomed to his new life on the go, spending about half his time in Lakewood and the other half in Sacramento.

“It’s got to the point now when we’re up here (in the capital), we look forward to the weekend when we can get home,” Zeltner says, “and then, when we get home and get involved in the activities down there, we look forward to Monday so we can come back here.”