Lobbyists Get a Larger Role in Legislature : Prop. 140: ‘Third house’ gaining clout because of term limits, depleted budgets.

When state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) told a lobbyist for a major industry that she could not carry a bill for him because her staff had been cut, he offered to solve the problem for her.

“He said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything,’ ” recalled the veteran lawmaker. The lobbyist was willing to write the bill, negotiate amendments, and shepherd it through the Legislature.

“To that response, I said, ‘No, thank you,’ ” Bergeson said. But other legislators, she added, are accepting such offers increasingly since Proposition 140 has cut staff and enhanced lobbyists’ clout.

More and more, she said, when she raises a question about another legislator’s bill, she is being referred not to that legislator’s knowledgeable staff but to lobbyists, whose first allegiance is to their clients and not necessarily to the public good.

In a Legislature depleted of some of its most senior staff members, the larger role for lobbyists is the first visible effect of Proposition 140. Upheld earlier this month by the California Supreme Court, the initiative imposes term limits on lawmakers and a 38% cut in the legislative budget.

Already called “the third house” of the Legislature because of its formidable influence, a growing Capitol lobbying corps is now likely to play an even larger role than it has at any time since the 1960s.

That’s when Democratic Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh, the legendary “Big Daddy” of California politics, began recruiting bright young college graduates to serve as professional staff. They were intended to be a cadre of experts, to counter both powerful lobbyists working for special interests and executive branch bureaucrats serving the governor.

No one suggests that the latest cuts will return Sacramento to those pre-Unruh days when liquor lobbyist Artie Samish, working out of a hotel across from the Capitol, could boast with some truth that he was more powerful than any legislator--more powerful even than the governor.

The authors of Proposition 140 always have minimized the impact of the cutbacks, arguing that an infusion of citizen-legislators serving limited terms--six years in the Assembly, eight in the Senate--will be more responsive to constituents than to special-interest lobbyists.

“It will depend on who the individual people are who now take office,” said former Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum, an architect of the term-limit initiative.

The new breed of lawmakers envisioned by Schabarum won’t become pawns of lobbyists or bureaucrats “if they bring a certain level of intelligence and ability . . . and an individual willingness to get involved in issues.”

But if Bergeson and others are correct, the initiative has given lobbyists new advantages.

One of the worst-kept secrets in the Capitol is that many lobbyists already actually write the bills that legislators carry on their behalf.

One long-time lobbyist confirmed that he has always helped write and prepare legislation, but that now he does more than that.

“Usually, I’ve had a (legislative) staff person to work with and we’ve split up the job, with the staff person writing the floor statements and lining up witnesses for hearings.” In the aftermath of Proposition 140, the lobbyist said he is doing almost all the work himself, “which I like.”

Robert Naylor, a former Assembly Republican leader who now lobbies for a number of major businesses, sees a positive side for the public. Term limits, he said, will bring in “new blood”--legislators who will “sit down and deal with each other on a less partisan and more constructive basis than has become the habit.”

As for lobbyists, Naylor says, they “are going to have to go in and argue issues on the merits rather than on friendship.”

Many other lobbyists agreed with Naylor’s forecast, predicting fundamental shifts in the way they do business--with far less reliance on long-term friendships, ties to leadership and campaign contributions to incumbents. They will have to work harder than before, they say, developing complete bill packages, organizing grass-roots support for measures in members’ districts, and maybe even grooming and bankrolling sympathetic local politicians to run for the Legislature.

Up to now, the most potent lobbyists have often been those who have worked the Capitol the longest, said Jay Michael of the California Medical Assn., who has been lobbying the Legislature since 1957.

“Lobbyists, if they are any good, get more powerful, more influential the longer they are here, and one of the reasons for that is they have long-term relationships with members who have gotten more powerful the longer they are here,” Michael said.

Business lobbyist George Steffes, who began his career in 1967 as top lobbyist for then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, has been telling the young college graduates he brings into his firm that they need to be patient--it takes time to develop trusting relationships with lawmakers. But by December, 1996, when most of the 120 current members of the Legislature will be out of office because of the term limits, patience will be a luxury no lobbyist can afford.

“I’m sitting here having built a reputation up over 25 years, and quite frankly I do benefit from that,” Steffes said. His represents such clients as Burger King, Coors, Exxon, Hughes Aircraft, Mercedes Benz of North America and Simon and Schuster. “Suddenly I’ll be in a position of never having been heard of before.”

Other lobbyists are convinced that a shift in power has already begun, and they worry that not every interest will share equally in the benefits.

Ralph Lightstone, who lobbies for the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation--which most notably battles for tighter restrictions on pesticide use--agrees that Proposition 140 “gives lobbyists a lot more control, absolutely. And that’s good if you’re a lobbyist.” But he thinks that the chief beneficiaries will be “the moneyed interest groups” and not groups like his own, which have limited resources.

John F. Henning, secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, said that power will swing toward interests that can produce the most campaign money for increasingly competitive legislative races.

“This favors corporations and the major lobbyists,” he said. “They have more money than labor and consumer groups.”

One longtime lobbyist, who asked not to be identified, said his chief client has been spending its money to support the reelection of incumbents. “Now it will be more profitable to help get people elected . . . who are going to be your friends,” he said. “Candidate development is going to be a lot more important.”

Gerald Meral, executive director of the Planning and Conservation League, fears that the inevitable turnover of legislators and staff with knowledge of environmental issues will be a gain for the industry groups that he frequently opposes.

“This is going to be disruptive to us and make our lives more difficult,” he said. “It strengthens the (interest groups) with the money to take advantage of it--the doctors, the manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce.”

In January, both the Senate and Assembly began formally paring the ranks of their employees, offering workers up to five months’ severance pay to leave voluntarily. Other employees were given “golden handshakes”--improved benefits for taking early retirement. Lately, some employees have simply been laid off.

The result has been a sharp drop in staff in both houses--from about 2,580 employees at the beginning of the year to 1,880 this month, a cut of 27%. Tipping the balance even more, notes Cliff Berg, the Senate Rules Committee’s executive officer, is the revolving-door phenomenon; “50 or 60 former staff people are now registered as lobbyists,” he pointed out.

Staff cuts have already had a crippling effect on the Legislature, said one of the newer Assembly members, Curtis Tucker Jr. (D-Inglewood), who took office in 1989.

Coupled with term limits, the staff cuts are certain to make lobbyists more powerful, he said. “You’re going to have committee chairs who don’t know what the issues are,” Tucker said. “It’s going to break down into a battle of 30-second sound bites. Whoever makes a point, no matter how superficial, you’re going to go with that.”

“You may find lobbyists becoming direct-mail experts,” said Jackson R. Gualco, former assistant to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. He is now a lobbyist in a firm that includes two other ex-legislative staffers.

The potential for labor and other special-interest groups to elect legislators in the new, more competitive political world that Proposition 140 has created has Sen. Bergeson rethinking her position on campaign reform.

Once an opponent of public campaign financing, she now believes that option must be considered, along with others, such as free broadcast time for political candidates. Although GOP lawmakers have traditionally opposed such intervention in campaigns, Bergeson said, “It may well be that Republicans (will) jump on the bandwagon.”