Collision of Losers

It’s a good thing for California that states bidding for a $4.4-billion super atom smasher don’t have to vouch for the judgment or common sense of their politicians to be in the running. This state wouldn’t have a chance.

With minutes to spare, Sacramento finally asked the federal government on Wednesday to consider California as the site for a superconducting super collider, the world’s biggest and most powerful atom smasher.

Along the way, the California Legislature set new standards for dishonor in pursuit of the public’s business, managing to blend a contempt for both science and civil rights that will be difficult, if not impossible, to match.

Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale), using a minority block of Republican votes as leverage, pushed the project to the brink on the ground that the idea of giving a larger share of public-works projects to minorities and women was ideologically tainted.

Nolan acted because he somehow perceived a threat to society in an affirmative-action proposal that Assembly Democrats wanted to tack onto a bill that would pledge $560 million in state money toward construction of the super collider if it were built in California.

It was a move to which Nolan apparently gave little thought in any mathematical sense. Contracts for state highway and prison construction projects already have goals of allocating 13% of the work to companies operated by minority males. The Democrats wanted to nudge that up to 15% on the super collider. A 3% allocation to companies operated by women would have gone to 5%.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) seemed happy to help push the project off the cliff, no matter that it will strip away mysteries of the atom and the universe at which particle physicists using the most powerful colliders now in operation can only guess. His message was: No affirmative action, no collider. And when agreement still seemed beyond reach Tuesday, Brown shut down the Assembly.

Gov. George Deukmejian remained aloof from the outrage, stepping in only at the last minute, along with representatives of the University of California, to persuade Assembly Republicans to go for the compromise bill.

Even then it took a parliamentary maneuver in which those so inclined could vote for one bill that would authorize a bond issue for the state’s contribution toward an atom smasher and against one that would set the terms for affirmative action.

Brown originally proposed setting aside 40% of the work for businesses operated by minorities and women, establishing a precedent for other projects to be financed by one giant $12-billion bond issue of which money for the atom smasher was a part. Republicans balked on the ground that the affirmative-action goals in the Brown amendment were quotas in disguise.

California may get its super collider and the prestige that would come with being host to the world’s top physicists as they break the stuff of the universe down to its bare essentials. It may not. But even a prize as great as the super collider is not likely to erase the sordid picture of Sacramento’s haggling over whether women and members of minorities are entitled to share in the economic wealth and scientific glory that the atom smasher would bring.

Back-room deals, riders to “veto-proof” bills and last-minute compromises are common in Sacramento, as are winners and losers. But they are seldom as widely shared with the public as was the super-collider episode in which there were no winners, only losers.

Breaking the super-collider bills apart, for example, serves a purpose in Sacramento. Politicians who think that it is essential to their careers can truthfully tell voters in their districts that they voted in favor of a super collider but against giving a share of the jobs that it would bring to women and men in minority groups. Others can skip over the atom smasher and its promising role in man’s search for answers to the most basic of questions and emphasize the vote for affirmative action. That politicians see such duplicity as necessary to remain in office makes losers of us all.