Roberti Will Sponsor Citizen Activist’s Financial Disclosure Bill

Ralph Morrell, the self-styled citizen activist who for a decade has pestered the Legislature to correct abuses and excesses, on Thursday recruited Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti for his crusade.

Appearing a bit self-conscious at a press conference where he sat shoulder to shoulder with Morrell, Roberti (D-Los Angeles) announced that he has agreed to sponsor legislation to more fully disclose how much of the taxpayers’ money the lawmakers spend on themselves.

Roberti acknowledged the single-minded “tenacity” of Morrell and said he and his erstwhile adversary had reached a “consensus” that provided “some concessions to citizen concerns about openness.”

“We have a duty . . . to recognize that the Legislature is not the legislators’ thing but the citizens’ thing,” Roberti said.

Pressure on Legislature

Although Roberti did not mention it, his authorship of the Morrell bill comes as the Legislature is under pressure to take substantive steps to improve its image and credibility in the wake of a 3-year-old FBI investigation into alleged political corruption.

Morrell, 71, is a retired U.S. Navy warrant officer turned citizen activist who patrols the hallways of the Capitol, striking out at what he sees as abuses. He has sued the Legislature on occasion and has even launched some quixotic ballot initiative efforts.

Although he has not won every fight, he has scored some impressive victories. It was Morrell in the early 1980s who pressured the Assembly to abolish its practice of “ghost” voting and vote switching.

In ghost voting, an Assembly member would activate the electronic voting button of an absent colleague. Vote switching allowed an Assembly member to switch his vote in the official Assembly minutes to “yes” or “no” after the outcome was announced, provided the switch did not change the outcome.

At another point, Morrell pressured the Assembly to quit providing free ice cream bars and other treats to its members.

But it was the Legislature’s own expenditures and the lack of specifics provided to the public on how the money was spent that angered Morrell the most. He has deplored the Legislature’s budget as a “slush fund” and denounced the lawmakers as “scoundrels.”

Historically, the Legislature has jealously guarded its own expenditures, which this year total $160 million and are expected to reach $171.7 million next year.

Although the Senate and Assembly make the spending reports public, they are usually generalized in broad categories without breaking out individual items, such as meals or first-class travel. Also, there is no deadline for disclosing the audits.

Informal Audits

Legislative spending is not required to be audited by the state controller, the keeper of the state’s checkbook and the official who is authorized to reject payment of expenses he believes to be unnecessary or improper.

Roberti indicated that the state controller already conducts informal audits of the Legislature’s spending. Under the bill, the controller will be required to make an official audit of legislative spending and make a public report no later than Nov. 30 of the next year. When reporters noted that the spending reports would be about 2 years old when released, Roberti said he would “consider” making them more timely.

In addition, the reports would detail many of the issues Morrell has complained about for so long--taxpayer-financed meals, expenses incurred in attending ceremonies, first-class travel and the costs of frequent office remodeling.

Morrell congratulated Roberti on his “statesmanship and leadership,” saying the Senate leader has the “ability to say no as well as the ability to say yes.”

Roberti conceded to reporters that some features of the bill will face opposition from some legislators, if for no other reason than that Morrell wrote them.