A Tale of How Money Counts in Sacramento

When a top aide to Sen. Joseph B. Montoya (D-Whittier) called the owners of a small but growing mail order contact lens business in San Diego last year, they were shaken by his news.

An obscure bill, written by the California Optometric Assn., was due for a hearing before the Senate Business and Professions Committee, chaired by Montoya. If passed, the measure would very likely put the company, Dial A Contact Lens Inc., out of business.

With minor variations, the various parties basically give this account:

Advised to Contact Lobbyist

The Montoya aide, Amiel A. Jaramillo, advised the owners--a husband-and-wife team--to contact a Sacramento lobbyist, and among those he recommended was David Kim.

They did. What the lobbyist told Dieter and Jamie Hundt shook them even more--and provided a rare, behind-the-scenes insight into how private money often determines the course of little-noticed, special-interest legislation in Sacramento.

In this case, Kim said, it would cost the couple as much as $25,000 in lobbying fees to beat back the optometrists over the next year.

“We were so scared,” Jamie Hundt said in an interview. “I’ll never forget that feeling. It was a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.”

Jamie Hundt sought advice from her father, Bert Williams, a Texas lawyer and former mayor of El Paso. Williams called both aide Jaramillo and lobbyist Kim. “I was thrown for a loop,” recalled Williams, a veteran of Texas politics. “This kind of bite thing is going on too much in this country.”

Williams said Kim told him it would be a good idea if the Hundts kicked in another $20,000 for campaign contributions.

Dieter Hundt said that lobbyist Kim told them that the California Optometric Assn. was a powerful force in the Capitol.

Records show that the association spent $99,000 for lobbying activity last year. And since 1985, the organization’s political action committee has made more than $500,000 in campaign contributions to legislators--including $9,600 to Montoya himself.

The optometrists have also proved to be generous with gifts and honorariums.

Last year, for example, the association gave Montoya four pairs of eyeglasses and a set of contact lenses reportedly worth a total of $518. Since 1985, Montoya has also reported receiving $5,000 in speaking fees from the group.

Kim has frequently represented special-interest groups before the Montoya committee. And one of his clients, Affiliated Podiatrists of California, paid Montoya $3,500 in speaking fees in 1987 and 1988.

Faced with a formidable opponent, the Hundts agreed to hire Kim five days before the bill was to be considered by Montoya’s committee. Kim gave them a copy of his lobbying contract in an envelope marked with the printed return address of chairman Montoya’s committee, according to the Hundts.

The company won a brief reprieve: the committee hearing on the bill, sponsored by Sen. Dan McCorquodale (D-San Jose), was postponed for three weeks. That gave the Hundts time to contact their customers for a letter-writing campaign to Montoya and other members of the committee. And faced for the first time with organized opposition to the bill--voters who wanted to keep buying their contact lenses at a discount from the Hundts--the committee killed the measure in May.

But the battle had just begun over the legislation, which would ban dispensing of contact lenses by mail unless the seller personally checks the way the lenses fit the eyeball.

This year, a similar measure by Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) passed the Montoya committee last month and is now awaiting a vote by the full Senate.

Clues to the FBI

And the Hundts, frustrated and angry that they must court legislators as well as customers if their business is to survive, have told their story to the FBI, which is continuing its 3 1/2-year investigation of alleged political corruption in the Capitol.

As a result of that federal probe, both Montoya and aide Jaramillo have been indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with 12 counts of violating extortion and racketeering laws.

Through their attorneys, both have insisted on their innocence. Neither responded to calls for a comment on the contact lens bills.

Jaramillo’s attorney, Christopher H. Wing, said his client was simply doing his job by contacting potential opponents of legislation before his boss’ committee. Wing also accused the Hundts of using the Montoya-Jaramillo indictments in an effort to discredit the bill.

Last year, the Hundts agreed to pay Kim only $2,097 for his efforts on their behalf--far less than the $25,000 extended contract he repeatedly asked for.

Omission Corrected

Kim failed to officially report $1,097 of that fee--an omission he corrected Wednesday, only after he was asked about the payments by a Times reporter. California law requires lobbyists to report all their fees to the secretary of state.

The Hundts learned about the latest version of the optometrists bill late last month--only after the measure passed Montoya’s committee on a 6-0 vote.

Seymour defended his bill as an important consumer protection measure. “I wear contact lenses myself,” he said. “If they don’t fit, they can do real harm.”

Dr. Harry Charm, who is past president of the California Optometric Assn. and Seymour’s personal optometrist, agrees. “Problems do not always occur with early warning signs of pain and discomfort,” Charm said. “There is no such thing as an absolutely identical contact lens that we can simply hand to a patient. The eyes have to be checked.”

The lawmaker denied that his bill would force Dial A Contact out of business: “It would require them to change the way they operate,” he said.

But Dieter Hundt argues that the lenses he sells are the same as those sold to patients by optometrists, at a fraction of the cost. “Once they are fitted and seen,” Hundt said, “the optometrists should let them go elsewhere for the lenses.”