Judge Changes Arguments Against Initiative to Resurrect Cal/OSHA

To avoid possible voter “misunderstanding,” a state court judge Friday ordered changes in Gov. George Deukmejian’s ballot pamphlet arguments against Proposition 97, a measure that would restore Cal/OSHA, the state occupational safety and health program.

In the ballot arguments, Deukmejian--along with Cal/OSHA chief Robert Stranberg and former California Chamber of Commerce President John Hay--had argued that “the total number of injuries, illnesses and work-related deaths in California declined” in the first six months after the governor’s 1987 decision to drop state funding for worker safety inspections in private businesses and turn the program over to the federal government.

Deaths Rise, Judge Decides

However, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Rothwell B. Mason found that the number of work-related deaths in California had, in fact, risen after the federal takeover.

In the last six months of 1987, just after the federal program took responsibility for inspections at private work sites, there were 101 deaths compared to 66 during the last six months of 1986, according to state Sen. Cecil N. Green (D-Norwalk) and Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Hawthorne), who filed the suit.

Faced with the record, Mason ordered the reference to the worker deaths deleted from the anti-Proposition 97 arguments.

Mason refused, however, to delete the references to a decline in injuries and illnesses. In an interview after his ruling, he said the statistics for these categories were equivocal.

The judge insisted that there was no evidence that Deukmejian and the other signers of the anti-Proposition 97 arguments intended to deceive.

“Gov. Deukmejian has as high an integrity quotient as anybody in this century,” said Mason, who was first appointed to the bench by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and who described himself as an unabashed admirer of Deukmejian.

Green and Floyd hailed the ruling as proof of “political manipulation of death and injury reports” by the Deukmejian Administration.

‘Truth in Government’

“We’ve got to have truth in government here so that the voters can make proper decisions on ballot measures,” Green said.

Floyd and Green argued in their lawsuit that several paragraphs in the ballot pamphlet arguments were false and misleading and should be deleted.

Mason instead made what he described as two “modest changes” in the arguments that will be sent to all registered voters before the election.

In addition to dropping the reference to worker deaths, Mason also changed a disputed sentence on the power of federal inspectors to stop work when safety standards are violated. Floyd and Green argued that federal inspectors must get a court order before shutting down a work site while Cal/OSHA inspectors could do so on their own.

To clarify the issue in the ballot argument by Deukmejian and others, Mason changed a sentence that said the federal program could “stop work” to say that the federal program “has the authority to secure work stoppage.”