AIDS Bills Don’t Fare Very Well at State Capitol

Gov. George Deukmejian and the California Legislature, faced with growing public pressure to halt the AIDS epidemic, finished the legislative year unable to agree on most major proposals aimed at slowing the spread of the disease.

This year, acquired immune deficiency syndrome moved to the forefront of the Legislature’s agenda as lawmakers introduced dozens of AIDS bills. But most of the measures succumbed in an atmosphere of partisan politics--and fear among legislators that a controversial vote could be fatal to their careers.

“What we saw was the politicization of AIDS in a far more pronounced fashion than before,” said Assemblyman Art Agnos, a liberal San Francisco Democrat whose comprehensive AIDS bill was rejected by the Senate. “Politicians are fearful about this disease as individuals and as public officials. They simply don’t know enough to deal with their fear or the politics.”

Role in 1988 Elections

At the other end of the spectrum, conservative Sen. John Doolittle (R-Rocklin), who has championed widespread testing for AIDS, said legislators are realizing the virus is a major public concern that will figure prominently in next year’s elections.

“There’s a much greater awareness of the AIDS issue and the impact it is having out there amongst the electorate,” said Doolittle, whose own package of AIDS bills was shelved by the Assembly. “This is a watershed issue that will, and can, and must be addressed.”

During the first year of the two-year session, Democratic and Republican politicians reached a stalemate on most of the crucial AIDS issues, blocking bills designed to teach teen-agers about AIDS, reduce the confidentiality of AIDS test results and prohibit job discrimination against those who have the disease.

In approving this year’s budget, Deukmejian agreed to spend $63 million on a variety of AIDS programs--far less than the Democratic-controlled Legislature had wanted.

Bill on Drug Trials

The only major AIDS bill passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor in 1987 was a measure that carried few political liabilities: legislation that will allow thousands more AIDS patients in California to take part in experimental drug trials.

“We’ll see experimental drug programs and research programs passed, but the hard issues around the policies of AIDS in the workplace, in schools, in discrimination, in all of the sensitive areas will be retarded by the fear and the politics,” Agnos said.

Complicating legislative action on the AIDS issue, most victims of AIDS in California so far have been homosexuals and the disease has been spread primarily through sexual contact between males.

While concerns about homosexuality usually are left unspoken in the political arena, they surfaced during consideration of legislation by Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) that would have required schools to show an AIDS prevention video to junior and senior high school students.

Assembly Republican Leader Pat Nolan of Glendale, for example, protested that the videos would give impressionable young students a “how-to lesson in homosexual sex”--even though such films are made by organizations like the Red Cross and Walt Disney Co.

And Deukmejian, in vetoing the bill, said he was concerned that school districts “may find that the state-approved films contain material morally offensive to the local community.”

Efforts to make tests for exposure to AIDS more readily available to college students was also stymied by the governor, but for a different reason.

Despite broad disagreement among legislators on the role of testing in stopping the disease, the Legislature approved a modest bill by Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles) that would have nearly quadrupled the number of test sites where individuals can receive an anonymous AIDS blood test either free or at a low cost. Up to 146 new test centers could have been opened under the bill, primarily on college and university campuses.

An estimated 300,000 Californians have been exposed to the AIDS virus, state health officials have said. Supporters of the bill pointed out that individuals seeking the anonymous tests at 53 existing centers must now wait weeks. Roos argued that college students, many of whom are sexually active, should have easier access to the test in the hope of stopping the spread of the disease in the heterosexual community.

But Deukmejian vetoed the bill, saying that opening more test centers would not be an appropriate use of funds because college students are not “generally considered high-risk individuals.”

Although the 1987 session was marked predominantly by inaction on the AIDS issue, a significant shift in direction took place among legislators, particularly in the Senate. Support for protecting the rights of AIDS patients eroded, while lawmakers began to favor increased testing for exposure to the disease.

For the first time, the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected legislation by Agnos banning job discrimination against AIDS patients. Even stronger anti-discrimination language was passed by the Legislature twice in 1986 and vetoed by the governor. But this time, conservative Democrats joined Republicans in refusing to give the measure the votes it needed.

In addition, Doolittle rallied significant support in the Senate for his agenda of reducing privacy protections for AIDS patients and implementing widespread testing.

“The Senate is beginning to treat this as a public health issue rather than as a privacy issue,” said an obviously pleased Doolittle.

One of Doolittle’s bills would have allowed doctors to test patients for exposure to the AIDS antibody without the patients’ consent and would have relaxed the requirement that the results of tests for the AIDS antibody remain confidential.

Both provisions would have undone a law enacted in 1985 at the urging of public health officials in the hope of preventing potential AIDS carriers from going underground and continuing to spread the disease.

Doolittle also carried bills that would have required the testing for AIDS of state prisoners and involuntarily committed mental patients and would have made it a felony for carriers of the disease to donate blood or engage in prostitution.

“All this balderdash about public education is not stopping it,” Doolittle said. “We all know that’s not going to work. What we’ve got to have is testing because that will stop it.”

Many of Doolittle’s bills were passed by the Senate, only to lose in the more liberal Assembly in the face of opposition from Agnos and other Democrats.

But Doolittle said he will attempt again next year to win their approval and, if necessary, will seek to put an initiative on the ballot to carry out his program.

With Doolittle’s activism on AIDS comes the implicit threat that Republicans may try to use the issue against Democrats in election campaigns. Known as a shrewd and calculating politician, Doolittle is chairman of the Senate GOP Caucus and in that role has the responsibility for heading up next year’s Senate campaign efforts.

Doolittle has done considerable polling on the AIDS issue and contends that the Democratic-dominated Legislature is out of step with a public that wants protection from the disease.

“The public attitude shift is dramatic,” he maintained. “You’ve got 70% of the public supporting quarantine (of AIDS patients) or at least mandatory testing.”

In the Senate, Doolittle spearheaded efforts to defeat the bill by Agnos that contained the anti-discrimination provision. By rejecting the bill, the Senate shelved a comprehensive measure designed by liberal Democrats to define AIDS policy for the state.

The measure would have adopted the recommendations of U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop for combatting the disease, established a new commission to direct the state’s efforts to combat AIDS and promoted AIDS prevention education.

As a result of the bill’s defeat, even proposals that both sides could agree on remain unresolved. For example, Agnos’ bill would have allowed the entire health care team treating a patient to be notified that the patient has AIDS--a provision widely sought by nurses and doctors.

It would also have allowed doctors to administer the AIDS antibody test with a patient’s verbal consent, instead of the written permission required under existing law.

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), lamenting the bill’s defeat, said fear of the disease among the public has affected lawmakers’ outlook.

“I would say there has been a shift on the part of the public,” he said. “Much of it is spread by a certain amount of fear, some of it not scientifically based. It’s just something we have to deal with.”

While rejecting the major policy approaches represented by Agnos and Doolittle, the Legislature and Deukmejian enacted several bills that alter confidentiality provisions in small ways.

One bill by Assemblywoman Teresa P. Hughes (D-Los Angeles) will allow doctors to notify the spouse of an AIDS patient that the patient has the disease.

And a bill by Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) will allow health officials to conduct AIDS tests on cadavers when body parts are being donated. It will also permit physicians to conduct anonymous AIDS blood tests for research purposes without the subjects’ permission.

Even when both parties in the Legislature could reach unanimous agreement, Deukmejian was not always ready to join in.

The governor vetoed two bills by Assemblyman Johan Klehs (D-San Leandro) that were approved by both houses of the Legislature. Sponsors said the measures could have raised an estimated $150 million for AIDS research by giving a tax credit to private donors to a new AIDS fund.

Deukmejian argued that the state was already spending more than $15 million this year on AIDS research. He also objected to circumventing the normal budget process and creating a tax credit for just one of many serious diseases.

Bruce Decker, Deukmejian’s appointee to the California AIDS Advisory Committee who had called the measures the most important AIDS legislation of the year, said he was “devastated” by the governor’s veto.

Deukmejian’s rejection of the tax credit proposal left the experimental drug testing bill by Assemblyman William J. Filante (R-Greenbrae) as the most significant AIDS bill of the year.

But the governor made it clear that the state will only carry out clinical trials of potential AIDS drugs as a way of helping those afflicted with the disease--not set up a licensing procedure to duplicate the federal Food and Drug Administration, as some of the bill’s supporters had wanted.

Democrats, in an attempt to regain their influence over the AIDS issue, have scheduled a variety of committee hearings throughout the state during the next three months to explore aspects of the subject.

Hart, who will chair a newly created Senate select committee on AIDS, said he hoped the hearings will help educate members of the Legislature, as well as the public, about what should be done to address the AIDS epidemic.