State Ethics Bills Put on ‘Fast Track’ : Politics: Senators, stung by scandal and poor showing in poll, introduce package of reforms. Proposals are tied to a pay raise.

Top Republican and Democratic leaders of the state Senate, clearly preoccupied by the corruption trial of a colleague, Thursday introduced a “fast track” ethics reform package tied to voter approval of a prospective legislative pay raise.

The three bills, which provide the fine detail for implementation of a proposed constitutional amendment on the June ballot, drew hearty praise from one of the Legislature’s most outspoken critics, Common Cause.

“If it is passed in this form, I think it would be a major ethics reform,” said Susan Holton, Sacramento lobbyist for the citizen action organization. “Generally, it is going in absolutely the right direction.”

The proposal, which took almost a year to draft, was introduced as the political corruption trial of veteran Sen. Joseph B. Montoya (D-Whittier) moved toward its fifth week. It also followed publication of a Times poll that found most Californians believe legislators are “for sale” and think it is common for lawmakers to take bribes.

“These are not happy times for us,” conceded Senate Republican leader Ken Maddy of Fresno, citing both the Montoya trial and the poll.

“Every profession has a few bad apples,” GOP Caucus Chairman, Sen. John Doolittle of Rocklin, told a press conference.

Asserted Senate Democratic Floor Leader Barry Keene of Benicia, “The public is responding to a lot of the perceptions of the problem, rather than the reality.”

Real or perceived, the Legislature has a problem, said Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles).

“By and large, the main problem is a problem of perception, but that is no less a problem,” he said, adding that the Montoya case left him feeling “flu-like.”

In the Assembly, however, Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) was far less reflective and philosophical than he was angry and defensive. The Speaker sent a memo to Assembly members denouncing The Times Poll story and contending that “the underlying causes” for the Legislature’s poor image “have less to do with the Legislature than with the news media themselves.”

Pointing out that television news does not cover the Legislature extensively and asserting that “the newspaper-reading public gets fed a steady diet of allegations of corruption,” Brown concluded that “the common denominator that runs through this poll is how ill-informed the public is.”

Among other things, the Senate bills would prohibit legislators and other top elected officials from accepting honorariums--gifts of cash for making a speech or an appearance. Some lawmakers have reported honorariums totaling more than $75,000 a year.

The proposal, similar to a pending Assembly version of an ethics plan, would also ban receipt of a gift worth $250 or more annually from any source with an interest in legislation. The Assembly bill proposes a $100 gift limit.

The bipartisan Senate package would also strip legislators and elected state officials of their exemption from penalty provisions of conflict-of-interest laws. Such laws already apply to local government officials.

Although legislators have been loathe to enact laws that put them under the jurisdiction of the state Fair Political Practices Commission, the package would give the commission power to enforce most of the Senate ethics reforms.

Last September, as the Montoya case drew increasingly heavy attention and demands mounted for reform, the Legislature approved a constitutional amendment containing the outlines for upgrading governmental ethics.

Included in the June election proposal is establishment of a commission that would review legislative salaries and, presumably, increase them in exchange for a ban on honorariums and for restrictions on outside employment by lawmakers and top state officials.