Lobby Contracts Seen as Barrier to Foes’ Ballot Hopes

The state’s big insurance and legal lobbies, having agreed in August not to field any ballot initiatives against each other in 1988, have been working to limit the ability of other groups, which are not party to the agreement, to qualify initiatives on their own.

The lobbies--the Assn. of California Insurance Companies and the California Trial Lawyers Assn.--have retained the only two professional petition circulating firms in the state under contracts that forbid them to do any work on insurance or tort reform-related initiatives for anyone else.

Result of Arrangements

The arrangements were confirmed Tuesday by directors of the firms--Kimball Petition Management Inc. of Los Angeles and American Petition Consultants of Sacramento--and officials or spokesmen for the two lobbies.

The result is that consumer groups, legislators and others who are seeking to qualify insurance initiatives for the November, 1988, general election ballot are finding that those most proficient at collecting the 325,000 signatures of registered voters necessary for each initiative are not available to work for them.

Kelly Kimball, operator of the Kimball firm, said his firm was retained by the Trial Lawyers Assn. to circulate any initiatives it may choose to field for 1988.

No Activity Next Year

But a political consultant to the trial lawyers, Don Schrack at the firm of Woodward and McDowell, confirmed Tuesday that, under their agreement with the insurance lobby, the trial lawyers have promised not to field any initiative opposed by the insurance companies. That means the lawyers will not circulate any initiative petitions for next year’s ballot.

And Kimball said that another part of his contract was to “prohibit me from working on any other initiatives in this field.”

The result is that the Kimball firm is not available this year to help qualify insurance initiatives.

This also is the case with Mike Arno, operator of the other big petition circulating firm, American Petition Consultants. Arno’s deal, however, is with the insurance lobby.

Two officials of the Assn. of California Insurance Companies, Ed Levy and George Tye, confirmed that their group has contracted with Mike Arno to do any initiative work the association has. They have promised they will not try to qualify any insurance initiative for next year’s ballot.

At the same time, Levy and Tye said another part of their contract with Arno prohibits his firm from working with anyone else on any insurance-related initiative.

Arno confirmed the nature of his contract with the insurance lobby. “They’re tying up the talent,” he remarked.

Difficult Task

Tye remarked that the insurance lobby has been assured by experts that without either the Kimball or Arno firms, it will prove “almost impossible” for others to qualify any initiative that could harm the interests of the insurance industry.

Both Kimball and Arno said they would not have gone out on their own to be retained by anyone who wanted to keep them from circulating petitions, but both agreed that was the way their contracts in these instances were working out.

The two main insurance initiative efforts announced thus far are being led by Adam Burton, a former aide to Rep. Augustus Hawkins (D-Los Angeles) and Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, and by Democratic Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles).

Burton has the support of Mayor Tom Bradley and Hahn for an initiative that, among other things, would do away with the “territorial rating system” under which inner-city residents pay higher rates for insurance than residents of suburban and rural areas. Polanco’s initiative would limit recovery of non-economic damages (such as pain and suffering) in auto accidents while cutting liability rates by 50%.

Opposed by Industry

The Burton initiative is anathema to the insurance industry, which has long used the territorial rating system, while the Polanco initiative is expected to draw strong opposition from the trial lawyers.

There have also been reports that the Consumers Union will seek to qualify a third initiative, although its West Coast director, Harry Snyder, said Tuesday he is not at all certain it will, in part because, he said, it has been unable to decide yet what should be in it.

While Burton and Polanco are free to form their own petition circulating teams or hire others to do the work, doing so would make qualifying the initiatives much more difficult and expensive; some say nearly impossible.

Political consultant Michael Berman said Tuesday that without the professional firms the petition circulators will have to secure many more names on petitions because a higher percentage of the signatures will not be registered voters and will be ruled invalid. In addition, Berman said, they will be using people who are inexperienced at collecting large numbers of signatures.

“We (Berman’s campaign firm) qualified a slow-growth (municipal) initiative in Los Angeles through the mail, but we were appealing to high-income people,” Berman said. “These will be statewide initiatives, appealing mainly to low-income people who often are unregistered and do not qualify to sign. They won’t be able to do it simply by mobilizing college kids to do the circulation.”

Neither Burton nor Polanco could be reached for comment Tuesday.