TRANSITION WATCH

CLUSTERING: Californians dot the transition “clusters” set up by President-elect Bill Clinton to draft policy options for his Administration. The Golden Staters won’t come right out and say it, but they worked hard in the presidential campaign and would like to be rewarded--with an Administration job. . . . “At this point, we have no plans to do anything. But we’re here to be helpful in whatever way,” says Fernando Torres-Gil, a UCLA social welfare professor and member of the Los Angeles Planning Commission. He is working on disability and elderly issues in the health and human services cluster.

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JACKI’S VIGIL: Keeping an eye on California interests in the transportation cluster is Jacki Bacharach, a Rancho Palos Verdes councilwoman, member of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission and head of the Southern California Regional Rail Authority. . . . “I’m bringing Los Angeles’ concerns to the table,” she says. “There is a classic mix of people inside and outside the (Washington) Beltway. I’m letting them know that, in L.A., the environment is a front-burner transportation issue.” . . . Bacharach says her cluster will push for full funding of transit and highway projects in the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA--known affectionately as “Ice Tea”). “We need at least $4 billion more for new jobs. There are a lot of projects ready to go in Los Angeles.”

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WHO ELSE IS WHO: Rose Ochi, criminal justice planning chief in the Los Angeles mayor’s office, is mulling civil rights issues in the justice cluster. So too are L.A. attorney Emmy Akiyama and Dennis Hayashi of San Francisco, national director of the Japanese-American Citizens League. . . . A personal press release trumpets that Frederick D. Baron, an ex-Justice Department official from Palo Alto (“listed in Who’s Who in American Law”), also is in the justice cluster. . . . T.S. Chung, a Korean-American attorney who co-chairs the Brotherhood Crusade’s fight against liquor stores in South-Central Los Angeles, serves in the economic cluster. . . . And Anita Perez Ferguson, an Oxnard educational consultant who just lost a congressional race, is in the HHS cluster. . . . Also involved in the transition is Kim Wardlaw, president of the Women Lawyers Assn. of Los Angeles.

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ARKANSAS TRAVELERS: Will Bill and Hillary Clinton set up a southern White House in the Bahamas? You wouldn’t think so--seems too un-American. But for years, “when the Clintons really wanted to get away from it all, they went to the same little hideaway in the Bahamas,” a Little Rock, Ark., friend says. For the past 11 years, the Clintons also have made an annual New Year’s Eve pilgrimage to Hilton Head, S.C., for a gathering of something called the Renaissance Group, like-minded people who like to walk and wonk together on the silvery sand. The First Couple-elect are headed for another Renaissance reunion soon. Much socializing and deep thinking are on the agenda.