Boland Watches as Roberti Embraces District Breakup Cause

Try, try again: The position of Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills) in the Sacramento showdown over legislation to break up the L.A. school district might be likened to someone trying to catch a moving train.

Boland has a long history of supporting a breakup. In the 1970s she was active in CIVIC, a San Fernando Valley group that, among other causes, promoted a separate Valley district. Since her 1990 election, the conservative legislator has had two bills to split the district killed by her Assembly colleagues, but gamely plans to introduce a third.

Meanwhile, she has had to watch as her cause was taken up by Democratic state Sen. David A. Roberti of Van Nuys, the powerful Senate president pro tem. Roberti embraced the idea only after moving from his Hollywood-based district to a more conservative Valley district last year. With his support behind it, the breakup bill zoomed through the Senate and is headed for the Assembly, where a major battle is expected.

Boland is a principal co-author of that bill, but Roberti has left little doubt about who is running the show. And he has shown little interest in giving Boland a more prominent role. She is, after all, a member of the minority party with little seniority or political muscle in the Assembly.

Boland says she doesn’t care who gets credit for the bill as long as it succeeds. But she is clearly unhappy with Roberti’s treatment of her. She must run for re-election next year and the breakup is the hottest political issue to hit her northern Valley district in years.

She is still smarting over Roberti’s failure to invite her to a widely publicized press conference in December at which Roberti unveiled a state audit charging that LAUSD could not account for $73 million of its $400 million budget.

“I went right through the roof with David over that,” she says. “I should have been invited. Should have been part of it.”

Nevertheless, Boland says she is lobbying her colleagues to smooth the way for the Roberti bill. Its first key test will be a vote by the Assembly Education Committee, chaired by Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin, an influential Hayward Democrat and ally of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who has vowed to kill the bill.

Boland says she already has buttonholed Eastin and almost all 15 committee members. But she sharply criticized Eastin for opposing the bill, saying the Hayward lawmaker is putting the interests of the California Teachers Union, which supports Eastin, ahead of those of L.A. school kids.

Boland also warned that Eastin’s opposition will come back to haunt her if she runs next year for state superintendent of schools next year--a job in which Eastin has expressed interest.

“People in the L.A. area will remember that” and vote against Eastin in droves, Boland says.

Eastin is equally critical of Boland.

The Hayward lawmaker says she is still open to the idea of a breakup, but that there must be guarantees that the quality of education will be improved in the new, smaller districts.

Her committee killed Boland’s breakup bill in April, Eastin said, because it was poorly researched and did not address key questions like how LAUSD assets would be divided among the new districts.

“The bill was not very thoughtful,” Eastin said. “You cannot do this on the back of an envelope.”

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Board hopper: Longtime L.A. school board member Roberta Weintraub retires on June 30 but she already is aboard another board: the one that oversees the State Bar.

Weintraub was appointed to the State Bar’s board of governors by her ally, state Sen. Roberti. The quasi-public bar tests, regulates and disciplines California’s 112,000 practicing lawyers. A non-lawyer, Weintraub’s job is to represent the public interest. Her term runs until 1995.

Besides attending bar meetings (for which she is paid $50 a day, plus expenses), Weintraub is raising money for a foundation that provides 1,000 low-income school kids with shoes and training to run the L.A. Marathon each year.

She also hopes to resume her old job as a TV and radio commentator. Seven years ago, she hosted a weekly interview show, “School Beat,” that was carried by KCAL-TV and KMPC radio.

“There were a series of quiet years there . . . right after busing and before all the teacher strikes, where you really could do two jobs at once,” she said.

Weintraub has been mentioned as a possible candidate to succeed Roberti, who must leave his seat next year due to term limits. Will she run?

“I don’t want to cross off anything right now,” she said. “On the other hand, there’s a lot of life out there.”

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Polite politics?Election Night is always a cruel time for losing candidates. But it was particularly tortuous for Lyle Hall, the retired L.A. fire captain who was running for the Northeast Valley City Council seat being vacated by the retiring Ernani Bernardi.

Hall lost a 1989 race to Bernardi but was running again with strong support from local unions and elected officials. And when the first votes were counted, he surged ahead of opponent Richard Alarcon.

But as the evening wore on, Hall’s lead slowly evaporated. Alarcon, a former deputy to Mayor Tom Bradley, eventually overtook him and won by just 234 votes.

While he was ahead, Hall’s Sun Valley headquarters had a festive atmosphere, as supporters hugged one another and the candidate grinned into the TV lights. But the mood changed as he fell behind.

The change was perhaps best reflected in a remark by a TV reporter as she prepared to go live with the deflated candidate.

“So, you gonna concede?” she asked Hall chirpily as they awaited the on-air cue.

Seeing his stricken look, she quickly added: “Just don’t vomit on me when I ask you that question on the air.”