Roberti Raps Wilson’s ‘Rug Merchant’ Remark

Democratic Senate leader David A. Roberti said Thursday it was outrageous for Gov. Pete Wilson to use the term “rug merchant” to characterize legislators attempting to resolve the state budget crisis.

The Los Angeles lawmaker also asserted that the Republican governor appears to be “inviting an impasse” in deliberations by saying he is prepared to fight all summer if necessary to produce a budget that contains long-term spending controls.

“He has the duty to balance that budget and he shouldn’t announce an impasse,” Roberti said in an interview with radio talk show host Michael Jackson.

Wilson on Wednesday indicated impatience with the Legislature’s progress in resolving the $12.6-billion budget shortfall and frustration at what he said was failure of the lawmakers to fully comprehend the magnitude of the worsening problem.

“They’re used to sort of rug merchant bazaar haggling. And they’re used to doing it about pennies. Suddenly, they are confronted with a situation unlike any they have ever seen,” Wilson said.

Roberti, on the radio program, said: “I think it was an outrageous comment. I wonder who he was referring to. I’ll leave that to your imagination.”

Asked who Wilson had in mind when he cited “rug merchants,” his director of communications, Otto Bos, said the governor “wasn’t alluding to any specific legislators. He was referring to the processs.”

He said Wilson fully understands the give and take of political negotiating but recognizes that “the process cannot interfere with the need to have a solution. . . . The chiding he was giving was that we can’t simply do business as usual. We can’t keep haggling.”