Piracy Lives On

A group of state legislators has sidled forward to provide a smarmy example of a point we made recently about the meltdown of California’s sense of community.

Mostly suburban, and coincidentally mostly Republican, the group raided inner-city school district programs Monday in a display of social piracy made somehow worse because no money was involved.

They killed a bill, sponsored by Assemblywoman Theresa P. Hughes (D-Los Angeles), that would have extended a set of programs for five years--among them special studies for American Indians, for students who need extra help in reading, for children from poor families. Other legislation would have provided funds.

Assemblyman Charles Bader (R-Pomona), for example, voted against the entire package of bills, even though it included authorization for special programs for talented and gifted students and for handicapped students. He would like to have saved those, he said, but not enough to vote for the programs designed to help inner-city schools. Those were too “top-heavy with administration”--whatever that means.

The 48-29 vote, six short of the two-thirds needed for passage, will not stop the programs involved--at least in the Los Angeles Unified School District. A spokesman said that “we still have an obligation to provide a program for these students,” assuming that there will be enough money.

Money is in short supply in Sacramento these days, and a vote against more spending might have been easier to understand. But a vote of the kind that involves no money and does not even kill programs is hard to read any other way except as a case of a number of people going out of their way to say: Nobody cares.