<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : Wilson Goes the Distance in Search of Higher Ratings

That sucking sound going east was Gov. Pete Wilson’s campaign money, buying full-page ads in three non-California newspapers to detail his solutions to California’s immigration problems. Some interstate warm-up to NAFTA? His press spokesman said it was cheaper than placing ads in California papers. Wilson has been blaming his low approval ratings in part on virtually nonexistent coverage of the Capitol by L.A.’s commercial TV and radio stations. When one L.A. station did televise his State of the State address in January, it got clobbered in the ratings by a Batman cartoon. Still, there is the matter of timing for the governor to consider. The day he chose to unveil his reforms at a Los Angeles news conference, the live coverage went elsewhere: One in four TV sets turned on in L.A. was tuned in to . . . the arraignment of Heidi Fleiss.

Border war of the roses: California’s two U.S. senators accompanied Atty. Gen. Janet Reno on an official late-night tour of the frenetic San Ysidro border checkpoint this week, but of the three, only Reno was given bouquets of red roses by INS employees. Rather in the manner of the Queen of England, Reno just had the posies handed over to a staffer, who put them in an INS van while Reno went off to inspect the border. Roses--suggestion 101 on the list of how to earn a withering look from the new boss.

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Plate tectonics: It is not, repeat not, true that the DMV is recalling California’s vintage black and yellow license plates. (In California anything over 25 years old, people included, qualifies as “vintage.”) Rumor piled on top of bureaucratic error and amplified in an old car fanciers’ bulletin has the DMV fending off reports that the surviving 870,000 bumblebee-colored plates, issued between 1963 and 1970, are being canceled. DMV spokesman Bill Madison: “We’re not gonna snatch them back because we need numbers.” What they are doing because they need more license plate numbers is to cancel old plates that have gone unregistered for at least four years. “We’re sensitive to the fact folks are attached to the plates, and most of them are attached to older cars.” The plates, not the people.

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Death in venison: Not since Robin Hood nailed a few royal deer has a poacher been so ill-advised in his choice of hunting grounds. With a grant that permits them to use DNA testing in their war on illicit hunting, Fish and Game wardens say they tracked down the fellow who killed a deer on Clint Eastwood’s Rising River Ranch by matching up DNA in the deer remains to tissue found on the suspected poacher. Where science fails, there’s always civic virtue: a 24-hour CalTIP (Turn In Poachers/Polluters) line offers a $1,000 reward, but of 4,277 callers in one year, only 63 asked about a reward. The rest may just have wanted to meet Clint.

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Faxes are stubborn things: The California Journal’s state government roster (don’t leave the Capitol grounds without it) declares as “unlisted” the fax numbers in several legislators’ offices. Some of them will give the number out to callers, but add frankly that they can’t get official state business done when their fax machines are being overwhelmed by 200 faxed copies of the same letter, “none of them from within the district,” says Duane Peterson, chief of staff to state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica). “Happily, our fax machine is proximate to the recycling bin.” (Peterson’s boss was recently married, and the wedding vows, exchanged before a Buddhist priest, included a pledge to preserve old-growth forests.) James Gelb, chief of staff to Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles), says their one fax machine is a clunker they try to reserve for interoffice and constituent business, and “even so, had to turn it off sometimes (or) use up a whole roll of paper.” And Sen. Teresa Hughes’ senior assistant, Joseph Hew Len, says wistfully: “It would be nice if people started sending letters again.”

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Cleaning up their act: Once the terror of California’s GOP politics (showdowns with Nixon, face-offs with Reagan), this political group is making nice. An adopt-a-highway sign on California 395 a few miles this side of the Nevada border tells drivers that the next two miles of roadside cleanup are brought to them by the John Birch Society.

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A river runs under it, again: After the bridge over Coarsegold Creek washed out last winter, and Madera County figured it would cost every landowner along Meadow Ridge Road a $3,000 assessment to have it rebuilt, the residents said they’d do it themselves with an Army-style prefab bridge for half the price. The county will pitch in $143,000 of the $240,000 cost, and residents are getting a loan for the rest. And before you ask: yes, the county’s lawyer did have something to say about it, insisting on a clause releasing the county from liability for injury, collapse, and presumably any romantic fiction about rural bridges and the men who photograph them.

EXIT LINE

“Under the state Constitution there’s only one requirement to be Speaker: 41 votes. There’s no requirement he actually be in the Legislature.” --Richie Ross, Sacramento consultant and former chief of staff to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, quoted in the Sacramento Bee on post-term limit employment possibilities for his onetime boss.

Child Care Centers

The number of licensed child care centers in California has been increasing as more mothers enter the work force. There are 11,480 licensed child care centers in California with 12 or more children each; the average enrollment is 46.

1986: 7,361 1987: 7,841 1988: 8,256 1989: 9,184 1990: 9,817 1991: 10,556 1992: 11,003 1993: 11,480

Source: state Department of Social Services

Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times