NEWS ANALYSIS : Car Insurance Bill’s Death Is Laid to Brown

If the power of an Assembly Speaker is measured by his ability to get things done, to kill bills as well as move them along, then Willie Brown is as powerful as he has ever been.

Brown, a San Francisco Democrat, in 1988 came within a hair of losing the post which arguably makes him the second most influential person in the state, next to the governor. But Wednesday, he demonstrated convincingly that he is back, and better than ever.

Although he left no visible evidence, Brown is widely credited with killing the only active legislation seeking to provide low-cost automobile insurance to California’s poor, a policy that in theory also could relieve a financial burden from more affluent drivers who now must pay to protect themselves against accidents caused by the uninsured.

The bill was a compromise supported by Democrats and Republicans, Consumers Union, several insurance companies and a bevy of minority groups, who contended that it was the best way to allow low-income people to buy the insurance that the state requires them to have.

The measure was opposed chiefly by California’s trial lawyers, a lobby that counts Speaker Brown as a member and close ally. If enacted, the bill would have cut deeply into the number of minor auto accident claims that wind up in court, a change that also would have cut deeply into the incomes of trial lawyers, who have supported Brown and other Democrats with hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions.

Brown did not vote against the bill; he isn’t even on the committee that rejected it. An aide said the Speaker had no position on the measure. From all accounts, he called no meetings of Democratic members, as he has in the past, to tell them which way to vote.

But when the bill by Assemblyman Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton) fell one vote short of passage in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, the action had Willie Brown written all over it.

After the vote, Johnston confirmed that Brown opposed the bill, despite his staff’s protests to the contrary.

“The Speaker asked that I drop the bill last week,” he said. “I said I would not do that.”

To hear Republican Assemblyman Pat Nolan of Glendale tell it, Wednesday’s session was a textbook example of the Alice in Wonderland qualities of Sacramento, where things are not always as they seem. As if with some sort of invisible hand, Nolan alleged, Brown can wield his power without leaving a trace.

“There should be no mistake about it,” Nolan said. “This bill has been Speaker-ized.”

Nolan made his comments after Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-La Mesa), who once rebelled against Brown, tried several procedural maneuvers that would have doomed the bill without a vote on its merits. This was the first test of Peace’s loyalty since Brown reinstated him to the Ways and Means Committee, a powerful panel that passes on nearly every important bill that comes before the Legislature’s lower house.

“I don’t want to see this bill killed,” Peace said as he made the motion that probably would have done just that. And when that effort failed, Peace, who was listed as a co-author of the bill, which means he was committed as a supporter, declined to vote at all. In Sacramento, not voting has the same effect as voting no.

Another co-author of the bill who failed to vote was Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), who won his first Assembly race with pivotal support from Brown. At one point, Polanco tried to amend into Johnston’s bill some provisions from a measure Brown carried a year ago, another backdoor attempt to kill the legislation. But when that failed and the time came to vote on the bill as it stood, Polanco, too, fell silent.

Said Judith Bell, a lobbyist for Consumers Union: “Peace and Polanco didn’t even have the guts to vote.”

Brown’s other close allies on the committee tried to sweeten the poison with praise for Johnston’s measure, calling it a valiant effort to find a compromise that included the “no-fault” concept that trial lawyers abhor.

Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles) called the bill the “respectable product” of a lot of “hard work.” Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman, also a Democrat from Los Angeles and a trial lawyer, said he could not “imagine anyone putting together a better version of what to me is a troubling concept.” But both voted against it.

Roos, Friedman and others said they wanted to give Brown the chance to work with Gov. George Deukmejian on a different kind of compromise, one that does not include the provisions opposed by the trial lawyers. But that is the same rationale Brown used a year ago when he ordered Johnston’s bill put into mothballs so he could solve the problem himself. He then proceeded to win passage of a bill that Deukmejian warned all along he would veto, and did.

“The responsibility now is squarely on Willie Brown’s shoulders,” said Bell, of Consumers Union. “He needs to produce a bill and then win passage and ensure the governor’s signature.

“If he fails, then he has preserved the status quo: in some inner-city areas, 80% of drivers are uninsured. Immigrants face potential deportation by not complying with the law. Rates are skyrocketing. And the middle-class is looking at insurance expenses that are fast becoming their No. 1 expense.