Questions Raised Over Granting of Computer Access to Bane’s Wife

The wife of Tarzana Assemblyman Tom Bane has been granted a privilege ordinarily reserved for lawmakers and their staffs: her own terminal and file in the Assembly’s taxpayer-financed computer system, according to the Assembly Rules Committee.

With authority to use the state computer, Marlene Bane, a top Democratic fund-raiser not on the Assembly payroll, can correspond electronically with Assembly members, write memos and research legislation and constituent complaints as if she were an employee or lawmaker.

Bob Connelly, chief administrative officer of the Assembly Rules Committee, said she was given the authority earlier this year at the request of her husband’s office. He said she may be the only legislative spouse authorized to tap into the computer’s data bank, although several other relatives of lawmakers could also have access to the system.

Software Controversy

“It really isn’t that big a deal,” Connelly said, adding that 15 to 20 unpaid volunteer staffers or Assembly interns also have computer accounts.

Three years ago, a controversy erupted about Marlene Bane’s interest in Data Plus Imagination of Van Nuys because her husband was urging the Assembly to purchase its software. She reported selling her stake in the firm to avoid a conflict of interest.

Now, two Republican assemblymen have questioned her use of the computer. Assemblyman Richard L. Mountjoy of Monrovia, a critic of the Assembly’s computer system, said: “I don’t know why she would be privileged to have access” to the system, maintaining that the arrangement looks bad.

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson of Newport Beach said that if Marlene Bane is merely helping her husband respond to constituent problems, she probably is not acting improperly. Ferguson cautioned that to use the Assembly computer “for fund raising would be illegal, as well as plain wrong.”

Marlene Bane has emerged in recent years as a major fund-raiser for her husband, a veteran Democratic lawmaker, and for Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco). With an aggressive team of solicitors, she has funneled millions of dollars to Democratic candidates.

Scoffed at Criticism

But her husband, chairman of the Assembly Rules Committee, scoffed at the criticism of his wife, maintaining that she uses the computer only for legislative affairs. “What else would we use it for?” Bane asked in an interview. “If there was anything improper about it, we wouldn’t do it.”

Bane called the services performed by his wife, who has a cubbyhole office inside his Capitol office, a bargain for taxpayers. As an unpaid staffer, Bane said, his wife “takes better care of my constituents . . . than anyone else does.”

Bane declined to allow his wife to be interviewed, insisting that “her opinions and mine are the same.”

Further minimizing Marlene Bane’s access to the computer, Connelly said “it’s just a matter of time” before the public will also have access to some of the material in the Assembly computer. He stressed that Marlene Bane must abide by regulations that prohibit Assembly employees from using the system for political or personal business.

Marlene Bane first attracted attention as a political mover and shaker in 1986, when a dispute erupted over her ties to the firm that was marketing computer software which her husband was urging Assembly members to buy as a means of responding to constituent inquiries and mail.

Elaborate Index

The software grew out of an elaborate card file index that Marlene Bane developed to track the reason each constituent contacted her husband’s office. A former Bane staffer said the idea was to put letters bearing the assemblyman’s name in constituents’ mailboxes. “Even routine problems would generate five or six letters,” he said.

The Banes and Mike P. Shulem created Data Plus Imagination, which developed a computerized version of the card file system. In part to avoid conflict of interest, Marlene Bane sold her 25% stake in the firm for $1,700 to Shulem. Her husband has said he insisted on the $1,700 price tag “because I didn’t want anybody questioning whether or not there was a profit made on the problem.”

Later, another Shulem-controlled firm--Monarch Constituent Services of Van Nuys--was among half a dozen successful bidders for Assembly software contracts. Monarch has an increasingly large share of the Assembly software market--more than half of the Assembly’s 80 members. In the past two years, the Assembly has spent at least $1.3 million for computer software, including $567,000 paid to Monarch.

During that time, Marlene Bane has remained active as a consultant on computer issues, prompting some legislative sources to wonder whether she still has a stake, personal or financial, in the success of Shulem’s software.

Sought Her Out

Among other things, in the past year, state Sen. Henry J. Mello (D-Watsonville) and the staff of state Sen. Cecil N. Green (D-Norwalk) have sought out Marlene Bane to discuss how to use software to respond to constituents.

Mello said that from his perspective, “she was probably the most knowledgeable person” about software. “She really did me a favor. We talked for about two hours” about software and how it is put together, Mello said of his meeting with Marlene Bane.

In addition, two legislative sources familiar with the Assembly computer system say she participated last spring in at least two private meetings at which problems with Monarch’s software were raised.

Bane acknowledged that his wife took part in one session in which complaints about the computer system were discussed. He said Assembly computer users talked about problems at the meeting, which he believes Shulem also attended. “We had problems with our system, and she came in and explained the problems,” he said.

Mountjoy said he is unaware of any Republicans present at the meeting. “We’re not invited to those. . . . We, as the minority party, are working in the dark.”

Mountjoy said Marlene Bane’s access to the Assembly’s computer underscores her role as one of the most influential legislative spouses. As one lobbyist put it two years ago, “She gets the power of an assemblyman without having to be elected.”

More recently, she has drawn attention to herself as chairwoman of a state health panel that awards state research grants on lupus, a debilitating and potentially fatal autoimmune disease.

Bane, his wife and other members of the state lupus board are being sued by a coalition of lupus support groups which are charging that more than $1 million in state funds appropriated for research has been illegally diverted to non-lupus projects. At the same time, the state attorney general’s office has been auditing allocations by the lupus board and by a nonprofit lupus foundation run by Bane.