Now Batting: Willie Brown, Team Player

Just as professional athletes have “career years,” a veteran Assembly Speaker may be enjoying his.

As with the current baseball season, this legislative session still has a long way to go. But so far, Willie Brown is performing at a Hall of Fame clip--in contrast to the hall of shame image seen for years by many Californians.

First there was his showcase economic summit. Then his mediating that avoided a Los Angeles teachers strike. Now, using natural leadership skills and political acumen honed over a 29-year legislative career, Brown has ramrodded a state budget through the Assembly in time for enactment by the constitutional deadline--something that hasn’t happened in seven years.

The San Francisco Democrat still must deliver on workers’ compensation reform and other promised legislation to improve California’s business climate. And there will be a minefield of special-interest bills to stumble into during the frenzied session windup after Labor Day.

But to date, this is a Speaker obviously playing for the record book--meaning his legacy. Term limits allow Brown only 2 1/2 more years to polish his image for historians.

Nothing symbolizes this year for Brown more than his recent Assembly speech arguing for the shift of $2.6 billion in property taxes from local governments to schools.

“I went back and watched the videotape. It was good theater,” he says. “I actually had the facts down accurately and I delivered it succinctly and put a little bit of Baptist flavor in it; some choice words without cursing . . .”

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What drew the most attention was Brown’s lashing of Los Angeles County supervisors as “scalawags” running a “bloated” bureaucracy. But what fascinated me was this partisan Democrat carrying the banner for an embattled Republican governor with whom he previously had bitterly fought.

“I hate like hell having Pete Wilson finally produce a quality (budget) document,” Brown shouted, pumping his arm and jabbing a finger in the air. “I would hope he would go through and muddy the waters just as he did last year. I’m telling you, he has stepped forward with a legitimate, proper formula . . . a bold, imaginative potential realignment (of government).”

The Capitol is rife with speculation about why Brown helped Wilson. The governor and the Legislature had been in gridlock the previous week when lawmakers missed their own budget deadline. Until then, Wilson had refused to negotiate with Brown, not trusting him. But advisers and Assembly GOP Leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga convinced the governor that the Speaker would deal. It also was clear that another summer stalemate could bury Wilson politically--an incentive for Brown to let things drag.

But the Speaker thrust himself into marathon negotiations and immediately sided with Wilson on the tax shift. The Speaker’s first priority was school funding and the governor already had assured this would not be an issue, as it had been last year.

“Everybody is trying to think of some ulterior motive and maybe there is one; there often is with Willie,” says Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), who pushed the budget through his house. “But, frankly, I think that what you see is real. He didn’t want to go through this one more summer. He took the brunt of the legislative hit last year.”

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Says Brown, “At the summit in Los Angeles--and from every single, solitary citizen I heard--they absolutely demanded that we do a budget on time.”

The Speaker vehemently denies speculation that in helping Wilson pass his budget of pain, he was giving the governor rope to hang himself. “Clearly, Pete Wilson will benefit from early passage of the budget,” Brown says. “He’s going to take full credit and that’s what governors ought to do.”

Then there is the irresistible theory that Brown is positioning himself to run for governor. “It was fun and I’m flattered,” he says, “but I don’t want anybody to get the idea that I’m running. . . .

“If somebody walked in and said to me, ‘We’ve raised $20 million, here’s a poll showing that you are 10 or 15 points ahead of any primary opponent, all of the series of negatives over the last 29 years have been tested with focus groups and everybody is demanding you run, we have 500,000 registered voters who’ve asked you to run,’ then I’d have to consider it. But now you start scaling back any of those (and) you lose my interest.”

And the chances of those things happening, he says, “are about the same as my winning the lottery. . . . You’ve got to let folks have their dreams, but I don’t dream. I live in the real world. . . . I’m like a cat. You’ve never seen a cat attempt anything that a cat couldn’t achieve.”

This year, Brown is trying to achieve a lot in the Legislature.