Rating the Legislators on Measures Passed

Ask any Republican. It is not easy being in the minority party in the Legislature.

Being on the short side of the vote is frustrating. And sometimes the best bills get kidnaped by a majority party lawmaker after months of hard work by the original author.

That said, there is another issue: diligence.

One way to quantify a legislator’s effectiveness is to see what bills he or she gets approved despite the odds. This is what state Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) recently called a “primitive art form” for minority legislators.

But some do not even try. Some members of Orange County’s Sacramento delegation say they were elected to refrain from adding new laws to the books. Unfortunately, at times it appears they equate this goal with doing very little for the county.

In particular, Assemblymen John R. Lewis (R-Orange) and Dennis Brown (R-Los Alamitos) have used their get-government-off-our-backs philosophy to justify their limited legislative activity.

As Brown said recently, speaking unabashedly of the few number of bills authored by himself and Lewis: “We were sent to Sacramento not to expand government but to decrease its size and influence.”

Lewis ended the last session Sept. 15 as author of only seven measures, none of them approved by the Legislature. Brown, whose district includes portions of Orange County, did a little better. Of his 33 bills, three made it through the process to be signed into law.

At the other end of the scale were two of the county’s most effective legislators, Sens. Marian Bergeson of Newport Beach and Seymour, both Republicans. While both are in stronger positions to affect lawmaking, they also indicated a willingness to tackle issues of import to Orange County residents such as schools, prisons and drunk drivers.

Their scores: Bergeson--of 55 bills, 28 were signed by Gov. George Deukmejian. Seymour--of 67 bills, 22 became law.

Of course bill counting, as Norman Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, pointed out, does not tell the whole story. Some of the most effective legislators of both parties work behind the scenes to shape legislation, he said.

But, while both Brown and Lewis are active in GOP politics, neither is known for working with the majority party on legislation. In fact, quite the opposite. Both could learn from lawmakers like Bergeson and Seymour.