Legislators Faced With Inability to Police Themselves : Corruption: Tattletale rule and the belief that there will always be some lawbreakers are cited as reasons why politicians haven’t been more forceful in reforming.

The tally now stands at three state senators either convicted of or admitting to political corruption charges and the FBI search for more culprits in California government continues.

Yet the question persists: Why hasn’t the Legislature, its reputation continually sinking as more wrongdoing in its ranks is exposed, acted more forcefully to clean up its act and restore public confidence?

One clear answer, as old as the logrolling legislative system itself, is simple: You don’t tattle on a colleague whose vote you may need on a pet bill or project or for your own political advancement.

Speaking generally, one Republican legislative leader said, “It is human nature not to want to cross anybody and to be friends with everybody.”

Another answer, offered by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), himself a lightning rod for criticism of what only 20 years ago was rated as the No. 1 Legislature in the United States, is that in or out of government inevitably there are those who break laws.

“There is no way to ultimately prevent any human being from violating the law. From the beginning of time, we have tried to figure out how to regulate people’s conduct,” Brown said Wednesday in the wake of the announcement by former state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys) that he had resigned his office and would plead guilty to political corruption charges.

“You have to have swift punishment for those who act improperly and hope that will serve as an example to others,” Brown said. “I don’t know of any other way.”

During the past two years, Democratic Sen. Joseph P. Montoya of Whittier and Democratic former Sen. Paul Carpenter of Downey were convicted on political corruption charges stemming from abuse of their legislative offices. Robbins became the third elected state official to be similarly accused. Four former aides of legislative members have also been convicted of crimes related to political corruption.

Even though the Legislature last year approved and the voters ratified Proposition 112, a reform aimed at making lawmakers less dependent on special-interest money, Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) and others Wednesday signaled that a rigorous self-policing policy by the Senate seems in order.

Roberti said no senator has ever come to him and accused another lawmaker of committing a crime, but he conceded that he, like virtually anyone else in the Capitol, hears rumors of possible wrongdoing and that some mechanism should be installed to investigate the rumors.

“We have to try to draw the line somewhere. . . . I think these three cases just highlight the need to do that,” Roberti said. “But we have to balance that against the rights of protecting people from unfair innuendo and accusation, which happens, especially in politics.”

Roberti said that at least once he had privately sought to counsel one of the three senators who had run afoul of the law, but ran into a stonewall of denials. He said the member, whom he refused to identify, blamed his troubles “on his enemies.”

Bill Leonard of Big Bear, the No. 2 Republican leader in the Senate, agreed that more emphasis on peer pressure or an occasional word of caution by a legislator could keep a potential transgressor from crossing the line into unethical or illegal conduct. “We probably should do more of it,” he said.

One of the Legislature’s harshest critics, Harry M. Snyder, a lobbyist for Consumers Union, said he believes that not all lawmakers are corrupt but that “there must be something about that power that reaches down into every one of them. They all want to get their bills out. They’re all willing to stand by and watch democracy be subverted, even the best of them.”

Former GOP Assembly Speaker Robert Monagan of Tracy, once a staunch defender of the California Legislature and now a reform advocate, insisted that nothing will do short of a massive shake-up by the Legislature of the way its members collect campaign money from special pleaders, hoard it away during non-election years and then transfer it around to political friends.

Monagan said voters enacted the term-limits Proposition 140 last year as an expression of frustration with the Legislature and said unless the lawmakers heed the message and undertake fundamental changes a more drastic initiative may be forthcoming.

“They really need to clean up their own houses,” Monagan said. “They have one last chance to do that. Otherwise, they will be confronted with a haphazard attempt by the voters to do it for them.”

But for several decades, efforts to substantially overhaul the way election fund-raising is conducted have gotten nowhere in the Legislature. There has been no indication since Robbins made his announcement Tuesday that the Legislature was prepared to enact such reforms.

Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), said that sometimes well-meaning newcomers to the Legislature get “swept up in the glitz” and the “opportunities for power” and forget the public good.

“The way we are funded is a problem,” she said. “The ability to have to generate a campaign oftentimes is the way you perform for special-interest groups.”

State Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, a member of the House of Representatives for 10 years, said he believes political corruption “generally speaking, is far worse here” in the California Legislature than in Congress.

Lungren recalled his unsuccessful attempt in 1988 to be confirmed by the Legislature as then-Gov. George Deukmejian’s nominee for state treasurer by saying, “I walked in the door. They wanted to know how much money I was going to raise for them or against them. I mean, seriously, that dominated the conversation from a number of people.

“I’m telling you, I’m no virgin in politics, but in all my years in politics and Congress, I had never seen money to be such an obsession . . . I never had it be the first thing they wanted to mention to me and the last thing they wanted to mention to me and what they wanted to mention in between.”

He said his department does not have any “specific targeted investigations” under way.