But Deukmejian Ties Pay Off : O.C. Assembly Members Compile Anemic Averages

If they were baseball players, their batting averages would sound like a lineup for the Orange County version of the Bad News Bears.

John Lewis, .000. Dennis Brown, .090. Gil Ferguson, .103. Nolan Frizzelle, .182. Doris Allen, .184. Ross Johnson, .200.

But the names belong to county members of the state Assembly, and the numbers are an index of how unlucky, unable or unwilling some delegation members were this year in maneuvering their own bills through the Legislature and to Gov. George Deukmejian to be signed into law.

A review of all the delegation’s bills shows that performances such as these in the Assembly meant that the county delegation was slightly less successful than its peers in the fundamental exercise of steering proposals, great and small, through the sometimes-brutal legislative process in the Assembly and Senate. While slightly more than 37% of all bills introduced since January were passed, less than 35% of Orange County’s made it through.

However, once the county lawmakers gained approval from the Democrat-dominated Legislature,they had a much better record of winning final approval from Deukmejian, a fellow Republican. Just 7% of the Orange County bills were vetoed, in contrast with 16% for the Legislature as a whole.

By midnight Monday, Deukmejian wrapped up the 1989 season for lawmaking by approving or rejecting a deluge of bills that were sent to him recently by lawmakers who are now out of town for the rest of the legislative year. In all, the governor has reviewed 1,741 prospective laws churned out by the Assembly and Senate since January.

Some Orange County-originated laws that got through the Legislature and received Deukmejian’s blessings will have a big impact on all Californians, especially on how they relate to each other in traffic.

For instance, a measure by Sen. Cecil N. Green (D-Norwalk), whose district also includes northwest Orange County, now makes it illegal for drivers to plague neighborhoods and other motorists by cranking up their high-charged stereos systems, known as “boom boxes.”

Focus on Drunk Drivers

Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) specialized in measures that crack down on drunk drivers and inconsiderate truckers. His bills will lower blood-alcohol levels for truckers in 1992, mandates alcohol counseling for first-time drunk drivers and doubles the fines for truckers caught speeding.

Meanwhile, some of the delegation’s laws addressed issues of more pressing concern for Orange County. A Green bill finally freed $1 million for Caltrans work on the new county toll roads, while Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) worked on behalf of county officials to win authorization for a special election to ask county voters for a half-cent sales tax increase to pay for a new $700-million central jail.

Meanwhile, some county efforts accrued to the benefit of certain interest groups or projects having nothing to do with the area.

Sen. William Campbell (R-Hacienda Heights), for instance, pushed through measures that gave a $15-million state loan to a proposed Olympic training center in San Diego and a hotly contested $1.4-million tax break to a Contra Costa County multimillionaire willing to donate a classic car museum to UC Berkeley.

Special L.A. Exemption

Another Campbell bill drew strong opposition when it sought to prevent cities from barring truck traffic during certain hours. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley flew to Sacramento for a successful plea to grant his city a special exemption.

Even unintentionally, Orange County helped make new law.

The controversial circumstances of Assemblyman Curt Pringle’s election last year inspired a new measure making it illegal to post uniformed or armed security guards near polling places. Pringle and the county’s Republican Party are being sued in federal court for hiring security guards as poll watchers in heavily Latino precincts in Santa Ana.

Yet making a mark at all on the lawbooks was not an easy or particularly inviting task for some in the county delegation, especially in the Assembly.

A case in point is Assemblyman John R. Lewis (R-Orange).

Like other members of the lower house, he collects a $40,816 annual salary, plus about $17,500 in expenses, just for showing up when the Legislature is in session.

In addition, he receives $269,500 from the state to maintain offices in the state capital and at home, pay his staff, lease a car and cover such other expenses as airline tickets and telephone calls.

For all that, Lewis wrote and introduced just seven bills and resolutions all year. None of them passed, making him the only state legislator to fail in getting at least one piece of law to Deukmejian’s desk in 1989, according to the clerk of the Assembly and records kept by Legi-Tech, a computer tracking firm used by lobbyists and news organizations.

Lewis refused to return repeated telephone calls from The Times last week. The aide in his Orange district office declined to comment.

His lack of activity has been an issue in the past. When his opponent in 1982 repeatedly pointed out that Lewis did little in Sacramento, Lewis’ response was: “My style in Sacramento has been of a low-key nature. I’m not one of the more flamboyant types. But I think I’ve done a good job in philosophically representing this district.”

Colleague Dennis Brown (R-Los Alamitos), who had the second-lowest legislative batting average in the delegation, said Lewis’ record is no cause for alarm.

“I don’t think that is of any consequence at all,” he said. “John and I agree totally that we were sent to Sacramento not to expand government but to decrease its size and influence.”

Simple Politics Blamed

Other county conservatives said their low batting averages were a product of simple politics. “It’s not just the Orange County delegation that doesn’t get its bills through,” said Cathy Pirie, a legislative aide to Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach). “It’s Republicans through the state.”

Ferguson was on vacation in Europe and unavailable for comment.

“We have a liberal Legislature here, and until we have a majority, this is what is going to happen every time,” Pirie said.

Not everyone from Orange County was discouraged by those political facts of life, however.

“That’s the big turn-on for me--being adroit enough to have this legislation get through a Democrat-controlled Legislature, and it still has enough meat on the bones to mean something,” Seymour said. “In fact, that’s why I’m here and continue to practice this primitive art form.”

Making judgment based solely on the number of bills passed is a mistake, said Assembly Minority Leader Ross Johnson (R-La Habra).

Johnson and others said sometimes the less visible efforts expended in behind-the-scenes negotiations is more important than maneuvering a bill with one’s name through the process.

Explained .200 Average

“Literally, every major issue that the Legislature dealt with, I was involved in very heavily, be it workers’ compensation, the solid-waste issue, the ethics package,” Johnson said, explaining his .200 batting average.

Indeed, the delegation’s negotiations with colleagues netted $1.5 million for reconstructing the Huntington Beach Pier, as well as money to build two cafeterias at the Saddleback College campus.

Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) was part of the legislative team that helped with the ground-breaking work of changing the state formula for public school funding so that such suburban areas as Orange County will receive a greater share of discretionary money in the future.

And even when full attention is focused on bills passed, Johnson and others cautioned that the statistics may be misleading.

For starters, they point out that a bill stranded in committee this year will be left out, apparently a dud. Yet many of those measures are not lost: They can be revived and passed by the Legislature next year.

Some Bills ‘Hijacked’

Then there are instances when the Democrat-controlled Legislature, intentionally or not, “hijacks” a Republican’s bill to steal the glory. The Republican lawmaker will have worked long hours on the legislation, only to see it amended into another bill and accrue to someone else’s credit.

Such was the case with Bergeson and the jail-tax issue. She kept the Orange County sales tax election in a separate bill under her name until the last week of the legislative session, when political realities required her to lump it into a measure written by a Northern California Democrat.

Bergeson’s own bill was killed, but its text was included in the Democrat’s measure, which Deukmejian allowed to become state law last week.

Then there are the legislators who load up their files with bills so arcane, technical or innocuous that they are tantamount to a legislative “gimme,” sure to win passage and pump up the success rating.

“Believe me, if I wanted to have a batting average of .800, I could do it by introducing nothing bills,” said Brown, who also acknowledged that two of his three measures this year may fall in that category.

Exams for State Licenses

Orange County had its share of these bills in 1989. Take, for instance, Bergeson’s bill that excuses future landscape architects from taking oral exams for the state licenses.

A bill by Sen. Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim) changes the name of the state’s advisory council on substance abuse.

On the Assembly side, newcomer Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) played to the constituents of his central county district by passing resolutions that honored the elderly, proclaimed “Southeast Asia Genocide Remembrance Week” and commemorated the public service record of President Ronald Reagan. Resolutions do not have the force of law and do not need the governor’s signature.

Pringle admitted this week that he inflated his legislative batting average by also asking Deukmejian to sign a bill that was flat-out unnecessary. The governor had previously approved a virtually identical bill, which made permanent the state’s Mobile Home Ombudsman program.

“One reason is just what you’re doing right here. You’re comparing my batting average,” said Pringle, who had a .413 average.

Analysis of Bills

An analysis of what the county delegation produced this year shows that:

* They had a difficult time having their bills approved by colleagues. Of 493 bills and resolutions they introduced since January, 171 were passed by the Legislature, an approval rate of 34.6%. The Legislature as a whole did better with its 4,659 measures, able to get 1,741--or 37.3%--through the committees and on to the governor.

* They were treated well by Deukmejian, who used his blue-pencil power to veto nearly 16% of all the bills that came before him. By contrast, Deukmejian vetoed just 10 of the 155 bills that Orange County legislators sent to him.

* The most prolific member of the delegation was Green, who saw 39 of his bills pass both houses. The lone county Democrat also sustained the highest number of vetoes--six--on such measures as the one that would bump up the Santa Ana Freeway on the state’s list for sound walls.

* The legislator with the highest success rating was Bergeson, chairwoman of the Senate Local Government Committee. As such, she carried some highly technical, non-controversial items that boosted her rating.

But she also carried high-profile legislation, such as jail tax measures for Orange and Riverside counties, as well as another measure appropriating $194 million to build a 2,000-bed maximum-security prison in Imperial County. She also introduced a bill to create a special state commission to study how to expand the market for recycled products.

Despite those big hits, Bergeson said she is most excited by a little-publicized bill that frees principals and teachers to make more decisions on how to spend state money for education.

“It gives them the funds and allows them to set up the programs with the involvement of teachers,” she said. “It de-bureaucratizes the system.”

* There was also a patchwork of themes, including development, road construction, freeway safety, housing, adoption and tax breaks.

This year’s Orange County-inspired legislation frees $1 million for the state to oversee the construction of two private toll roads in the county.

It also includes a bill that is a direct result of the tragedy three years ago when a speeding trucker slammed into a car on the Orange Freeway and killed its driver, David Shanbrom, 27. The measure, sponsored by Seymour, would make it mandatory for truckers to use both hand and foot brakes when slowing their rigs.

A bill would make sure that development agreements signed by county officials would stay intact when a new subdivision is annexed to a city. Other measures make it easier for residents to tax themselves for lights and landscaping.

Several bills dealt with the adoption of “special needs” children, including drug babies and infants exposed to acquired immune deficiency syndrome. One would establish a three-year pilot program to place such children in special foster homes.

One new law will create a mortgage credit certificate program to help first-time home buyers, as well as government requirements that developers replace--bedroom for bedroom--the low-income housing that is torn down by redevelopment efforts.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Campbell became controversial after attacks in the press and by colleagues that it was a tax break for the rich. The bill, which was signed by Deukmejian last week, exempts the multimillionaire owner of the Seattle Seahawks from paying $1.4 million in sales tax on a donation of dozens of classic cars to UC Berkeley.

* Legislators also looked after hometown issues. One bill allows the Irvine Ranch Water District to invest its construction money in county real estate, while a second permits the San Luis Rey Water district to increase its charges on large landowners.

Another measure authorizes the Orange County Transit District to give retirement service credit to employees who serve in unions.

SCORE CARD

Bills and resolutions by O.C. legislators. Part II, Page 2