Brown Diverts District Breakup Amendment

A bid to force a showdown vote on the Assembly floor Thursday on legislation to carve up the Los Angeles Unified School District was sidetracked by Speaker Willie Brown, dimming prospects for the proposal before the Legislature ends its 1993 session tonight.

Brown’s parliamentary move was prompted by an attempt by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) to amend an unrelated bill to allow voters in Los Angeles to decide the breakup issue and send it to the state Board of Education for implementation.

Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin (D-Fremont), chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee, immediately told Brown that similar provisions had already been rejected by her committee and urged him to refer the Katz amendments to her panel.

Brown, a breakup foe, acceded to Eastin’s request, showing how opponents to legislation can employ a parliamentary move to tie up a bill, especially at the end of the session.

Katz, usually an ally of the powerful Speaker, said the breakup bill was not being singled out for special attention by Brown, noting that he made similar referrals “with a whole series of bills.”

However, Katz added, “there are people who are saying that he’s being very precise with the procedures this year because of this bill, and that’s why he’s doing it to all the other bills as well.”

The maneuvering on Thursday began when Katz sought to take an unrelated Senate bill and tuck in wording that would allow voters to decide whether to carve at least 13 districts from the existing 640,000-student Los Angeles school system.

If approved, the matter would be sent to the state Board of Education to appoint a special panel to hammer out the details.

Brown referred the bill to the Education Committee but then agreed to a request by Katz to let the Rules Committee determine whether there should be a hearing on the issue before tonight’s adjournment.

But its prospects appeared slim.

“You don’t do this on the second-to-last day of session,” Eastin said in an interview. “It ought not to be done at the 11th hour.”

She suggested that Katz, chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, jealousy guards his turf. She said no one would be more angry than Katz if she sought to substantially amend a transportation bill on the floor without sending it to his committee.

Eastin said that if supporters want to redesign the structure of classroom education in Los Angeles they should do it in a bill fully reviewed by both houses of the Legislature.

Eastin and other critics of the breakup, including teachers unions, acknowledge that the district is beset with problems but suggest other solutions, especially increasing the authority of teachers, parents and administrators at individual campuses.

Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills), blasted Eastin as a puppet of teacher unions.

After the bill was sent to the Rules Committee, Boland told reporters: “The unions won. What Delaine and the Democrats did is they said that parents don’t matter. . . . It’s unions and their big (campaign) dollars that count. Plain and simple.

“Delaine’s going to say anything the teacher unions want her to say and the parents be damned,” she said.

Also pending in the Assembly is a measure by Boland that would dramatically drop the number of signatures needed to petition the state board to consider the breakup issue.

Boland’s measure is expected to be taken up today in the Assembly.

Without conceding defeat, Katz said he is prepared for a long struggle over the issue.