A Matter of Agenda Differences

I knew from the tone of his voice, and his words, that Dawson Oppenheimer was mad.

Oppenheimer, press secretary for Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, called to say he didn’t like a column I’d written about the supervisors’ reluctance to spend $9 million more for AIDS. He said I was ignorant. The depths of my stupidity amazed him. Just how, he said, can the financially strapped county find the money?

Having learned my professional manners from an earlier, cruder generation of journalists, I replied in kind. No, Dawson, you’re the one who is stupid, I said. If the supervisors want money for AIDS, tell them to stop wasting $4.5 million of taxpayers’ money fighting the U.S. Justice Department’s redistricting suit. And while you’re at it, tell the sheriff’s deputies to ease up so the county doesn’t have to pay off so many excessive force suits. That would save a lot of money.

But as you do with such disputes, I replayed the argument in my mind the next day. I don’t take back any of the excellent points I made. You never do that. But I do have to admit that Antonovich’s man might have had a point: When it comes to budgeting and spending, the county supervisors have limited choices.

Let’s say the supervisors gave up their redistricting battle. Assume the number of lawsuits against sheriff’s deputies was reduced. The savings would amount to relative peanuts in the big county financial picture. Most county programs are financed by grants from the federal and state governments, with many strings attached. Thus the supervisors have limited power over spending.

Most of this outside money--which helps to finance courts, law enforcement, county hospitals and mental health facilities--comes from Sacramento. That’s why the budget debate in Sacramento is so important to Los Angeles County.

If Republican Gov. George Deukmejian and his Assembly Republican allies win the budget battle, there’ll be huge cuts in the county public health system and mental health programs.

A compromise by the Assembly Democrats won’t be much better. The state, facing a decline of revenues, must cut expenses to meet a deficit. Nobody will win.

Ironically, the county is being hurt by the Assembly Republicans, a conservative bloc and a minority of the house. Although the GOP is outnumbered, its votes are needed for the two-thirds majority required for budget passage.

You’d think that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors--with its three-member conservative Republican majority of Antonovich, Deane Dana and Pete Schabarum--would get some help from this important GOP bloc, and from Gov. George Deukmejian.

But the Republican legislators--even suburbanites from Los Angeles County and surrounding areas--pursue a different agenda from the supervisors.

The supervisors have the day-to-day responsibility of running the huge county operations, seeing that the flood control system works in the foothills above the San Gabriel Valley, operating Olive View Medical Center in the San Fernando Valley, maintaining six jails, many sheriff’s stations, highways, roads, parks a huge sewage disposal works.

This is practical, unglamorous, local government. Dirty hands work. It tends to temper the ideology of the most conservative. For example, Antonovich and Dana joined liberals Ed Edelman and Kenny Hahn to support the successful transportation tax measures on the June ballot. Anti-tax Antonovich had to face angry San Fernando Valley commuters and saw he’d better try to help. Earlier, Dana was a leader in winning financial support for the Metro Rail project.

Having the hands-on responsibility of running government also has forced the GOP supervisors to compromise. They know they’ve got to get the job done.

There’s no such pressure on state legislators. Legislators don’t run anything--except for office. State legislators have the luxury of bathing in ideology. And that’s what is happening with the Republican minority in Sacramento.

On Thursday, I went to the Capitol to watch the budget battle and resolve once and for all the Boyarsky-Oppenheimer debate. As the session began, the Assembly chamber was half empty. Members read newspapers and gossiped. Soon, they disappeared from the floor for party caucuses. As noon neared, though, the debate heated.

One after another, Republicans stood at their desks and let the ideology roll, espousing the advantages of little government. It was all great oratory. You’d have thought they were dictating directly to the columns of the National Review.

But for the Republican supervisors of Los Angeles County, it did little to help them in their struggle with such pragmatic concerns as finding money to care for AIDS patients. It was, for Los Angeles County, government without representation.