Conferees Vote to Fund No-Smoking Ad Campaign

SACRAMENTO —  With tobacco lobbyists backing off, legislative negotiators quietly sealed an agreement Wednesday on a $1.5-billion bill to spend Proposition 99 tobacco tax revenues for a variety of health and other programs, including an anti-smoking advertising campaign bitterly opposed by cigarette companies.

Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno had indicated on Tuesday that he would press for an amendment sought by tobacco companies to pull $28.6 million earmarked for the anti-smoking advertising campaign from the Proposition 99 implementation bill. But on Wednesday he joined five other members of a two-house conference committee in unanimously approving the legislation.

Emerging from a private meeting with Gov. George Deukmejian and other legislative leaders, Maddy told reporters that there was general agreement that the bill was “a relatively good package.”

Maddy said he thought the controversy over the anti-smoking advertising provisions of the bill had been “overblown and exaggerated.” He added: “Our focus has been and should be--just as the initiative said--(on trying) to influence young children against smoking.”

Most of the dispute over the media budget centered on the effectiveness of television advertising in persuading smokers to give up the habit. Maddy had sought to drop the money from the budget on grounds that television advertising was ineffective, but his efforts were strongly opposed by sponsors of Proposition 99 who believe that television advertising is the best way to reach hard-core smokers.

Proposition 99, approved by voters last November, raised the tax on cigarettes 25 cents a pack and called for comparable increases in taxes on other tobacco products. The initiative required that the new money, roughly $600 million a year, be spent primarily to provide health services for the poor. But it also provided funds to finance an anti-smoking education campaign.

The compromise bill to implement Proposition 99 next goes to the full Senate and Assembly, which is expected to act before the Legislature adjourns for the year Friday night.

The bill, if enacted, will be in effect until 1991, when lawmakers hope to be able to reach agreement on a long-term Proposition 99 expenditure program. Under the bill, counties will receive more than $800 million in direct aid over the 2 1/2-year life of the bill. Other money will be available to provide additional funds for children’s hospitals, clinics and prenatal services.

Los Angeles County would get about $350 million in funds to help the county’s financially strapped trauma care network and other health programs.

Although the $28.6 million to be spent on the anti-smoking advertising campaign represents a relatively small part of the overall bill, it was enough to generate fierce opposition from the tobacco industry.

On Wednesday, tobacco industry lobbyists were relatively quiet, but on Tuesday they were lined up three and four deep along the public railing outside the Assembly. From that vantage point, they sent written messages to legislators inside the chamber and tried to buttonhole lawmakers as they left.

Opponents counted 24 lobbyists, including operatives from some of the most powerful lobbying firms in the Capitol and others flown in from out of town.

The tobacco industry, which spent $21 million to try to defeat Proposition 99, reportedly spread hefty amounts of money around the Capitol, hiring as many lobbyists as it could round up in an all-out effort to eliminate the advertising money from the bill. There were reports that some unnamed lobbyists were being hired just to lobby individual legislators with whom they had played golf or formed personal relationships. Word leaked out that these so-called contract lobbyists were being allowed to set their own fees.

But by Wednesday, legislators drafting the Proposition 99 bill said they could detect a distinct backlash among their colleagues. “The tobacco industry made a mistake by coming on so strong. They waited until the last minute to fight the issue and by then the only issue was them,” said Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg (D-Sacramento), chairman of the conference committee that spent weeks putting the bill together.

Assemblyman Bruce Bronzan (D-Fresno), another member of the committee, called the lobbying campaign “a clear case of overkill.” He said there is a point when lobbying “becomes so gross and so obvious that it becomes dangerous for (lawmakers) to associate themselves with it.”

Lobbyists working for the tobacco industry refused comment and referred inquiries to the capital office of the Tobacco Institute. The local branch of the institute in turn referred calls to its Washington office, which finally said it would not comment directly on the bill or the number of lobbyists it had hired.