Brown Wants State to Rent Jet for Use by Lawmakers

Incensed by repeated delays on commercial airline flights, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) says he will soon propose that the state lease an executive jet to ferry him and other top government officials around California.

“Air traffic travel under deregulation has become so unreliable, unpredictable and burdensome that it interferes with the ability to perform functions you are required to perform in a state as big as California,” Brown said at a meeting with Times editors.

Brown’s exasperation stemmed in part from his effort to get to Los Angeles from San Diego on Tuesday. The trip took the Speaker several hours to complete because two flights were canceled and the plane on which Brown finally booked passage could not find a spot at the terminal when it arrived in Los Angeles.

Computer Reservations

When his scheduled flight out of San Diego was canceled, Brown said, he and his press secretary had already checked in at the gate but were told they would have to return to the crowded main terminal to reserve seats on another flight to Los Angeles. Instead, Brown called the Assembly’s travel office in Sacramento and had an aide make the reservations by computer.

“We were blown away by the lines at the airport,” he said.

On another recent trip, Brown said, it took him 5 1/2 hours to travel from San Francisco to Bakersfield to attend a funeral. The powerful lawmaker said he was so frustrated by the delays that he drove to Los Angeles after the ceremony and returned from there to San Francisco the next morning.

Under Brown’s plan, the state would lease an aircraft for the governor, other constitutional officers and lawmakers to use on official state business. Southern California legislators returning to their districts each week could use the plane if it were already scheduled to go there on business.

Brown said at least part of the cost of the plane could be paid with money now spent on commercial flights. A Brown aide said Wednesday that the Assembly spent $81,400 on airplane travel for state business during the 1987-1988 fiscal year.

The idea of having an official state plane is not a new one. Former governors Edmund G. (Pat) Brown and Ronald Reagan both had planes at their disposal, but the practice was scrapped in 1975 by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. Last year, Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) proposed that the state buy a jet for the governor and operate it along the lines of the President’s Air Force One.

McClintock, who dropped the idea after Gov. George Deukmejian failed to embrace it, said 41 of the 50 states provide aircraft for their chief executives. Texas has 14 aircraft for the governor and other elected officials, according to the director of the state’s aircraft pooling board.

But McClintock said his proposal was prompted mainly out of concern for the governor’s security, and he said he would oppose any plan to provide a plane for lawmakers.

“A plane to give legislators rides back and forth across the state would get a little bit out of hand,” he said.

‘Crazy’ Idea

Another GOP lawmaker, Assemblyman Richard Mountjoy of Monrovia, a private pilot, called Brown’s idea “crazy.” Mountjoy flies himself and two other legislators to Sacramento and back to their districts each week. He is reimbursed $29 each way by the state--the equivalent of the cheapest ticket the state could buy on a commercial route.

“Just to have corporate jets sitting there to fly legislators around at their will is nuts,” Mountjoy said.