Lawmakers Pay Last Respects to Bradley

With the flag at the Capitol flying at half staff, the state Assembly was quiet during normal working hours Monday as many colleagues of the late Bill Bradley flew to San Diego to pay their respects at the funeral of the San Marcos Republican assemblyman.

Bradley, 70, died Thursday morning after a nearly four-year struggle against cancer, which was complicated by a chronic bleeding ulcer.

Out of respect to the well-liked Bradley, lawmakers put off their business until Monday night or today.

“As soon as we learned what time the funeral would be and we knew that everybody or most everybody wanted to attend because Bill Bradley was very popular, then we started making arrangements to change the session around,” said Susan Jetton, press secretary to Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco).

Assembly committee meetings scheduled for Monday afternoon, normally a light work day anyway, were postponed until this morning. Usually, no committees meet Tuesday mornings.

Suspension Not Unusual

In addition, Brown convened the full Assembly at 5 p.m.--late enough to allow lawmakers to scramble back from San Diego--to finish deliberations over a $50-billion version of the state budget package before it is delivered to an Assembly-Senate conference committee for final revisions.

Suspending legislative business during the funeral of a lawmaker is not unusual, said R. Brian Kidney, the assembly’s chief clerk.

“Whenever they’ve had a funeral of one of their own members, usually an extremely large contingent of the membership go,” said Kidney. “If need be, they will work around that.”

Kidney said that the last time the Assembly suspended proceedings was when Assemblyman Richard E. Longshore (R-Santa Ana) died last June.

Bradley, a civil engineer and former San Marcos city manager who was first elected to the Assembly in 1982, was known more for his candor and low-keyed, nuts-and-bolts style than for legislative accomplishments. An ardent backer of property rights, Bradley often fought environmentalists over the right of the California Coastal Commission to restrict development along the coastline.

Bradley also helped free state funding for dyslexic students and advocated the mandatory death penalty for people convicted of killing children 7 years or younger.

When he first learned in 1985 that he had terminal cancer of the liver and colon, Bradley announced that he would serve out his term and then retire. But he changed his mind and easily won re-election in 1986 after doctors successfully implanted a pump in his stomach to send chemotherapy to his afflicted liver.