Senate OKs Cigarette Tax in Closing Rush

The state Senate approved and sent to Gov. Pete Wilson on Thursday legislation that would add 2 cents per pack to the state’s cigarette tax to finance research into the causes and detection of breast cancer and its possible cure.

Plowing through dozens of bills on their way to a scheduled adjournment for the year at midnight tonight, lawmakers also moved along a measure to prohibit the issuance of drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. The bill was approved by the Assembly and sent to the Senate for final action.

Another bill expected to reach the governor’s desk in the session’s final hours would give state regulators more power to crack down on incompetent doctors.

The cigarette tax measure was approved in the Senate on a bipartisan vote as several Republicans abandoned their anti-tax political stances. The bill, by Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-North Hollywood), went to Wilson on a 27-7 vote, the exact two-thirds margin required. A companion measure to implement the cancer research program also cleared the Senate and was returned to the Assembly for final action.

“This is a vote for your wife, your sister, daughters, friends and family,” Republican Sen. Marian Bergeson of Newport Beach told her colleagues in the male-dominated Senate.

Aides said Wilson, who during the past two years of his three-year tenure has fought tax increases as a barrier to California’s economic recovery, has not examined the bill or decided whether to sign or veto it.

But arguments over the proposal rage within the Administration. Some top officials favor the bill, while others have counseled that a tax increase would worsen the business climate.

If signed, proponents said, the bill would make California the first state in the nation to levy a tax on cigarettes to pay for research into the causes, detection, treatment and potential cure of breast cancer.

The tax, which would bring total state taxes on cigarettes to 37 cents a pack, would raise nearly $40 million annually. Half the funds would be earmarked for research and the other half would be spent on early detection for women without health insurance or whose policies do not cover screening and treatment costs.

In Senate debate, Bergeson noted that at the same time that breast cancer rates are soaring among American women, scientists have been unable to pinpoint its causes or a cure. One in eight women will develop the disease, she said. In California by the end of this year, about 20,000 women will have been found to have breast cancer and 5,000 will die, she said.

Freshman Sen. Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove), who voted against the bill, suggested that there was no medical evidence linking cigarette smoking to breast cancer. He accused Bergeson of picking on smokers.

Tobacco taxes were last increased in 1988, when voters imposed a 25-cents-a-pack tax on cigarettes and earmarked the revenues for smoking-related health research and education. Friedman noted that the Legislature last boosted cigarette taxes in 1966.

In the Assembly, the bill to prohibit the issuance of drivers licenses to illegal immigrants passed easily, 51-13, with proponents arguing that the measure would help stem illegal immigration. Sponsored by Sen. Alfred E. Alquist (D-San Jose) and supported by the governor, the bill was sent back to the Senate for approval of amendments, considered likely.

The Alquist bill would require, effective March 1 of next year, an applicant for an original California drivers license or identification card to prove citizenship or legal residence in the United States.

It also would require each drivers license issued after July 1, 1995, to include a notice declaring that the license does not establish eligibility for employment or voter registration.

“The federal government has failed to enforce immigration laws,” said Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles), who handled the bill on the lower house floor, “so the state has to do it.”

But other Latino members spoke against the bill. Assemblywoman Martha M. Escutia (D-Huntington Park) called it a placebo, adding: “People do not come to the U.S. to drive cars. The lure of jobs is the magnet. If there is a demand, there will be a supply.”

The physician regulation bill, by Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), passed the Assembly 60-1 and was sent to the Senate for a vote on amendments. The measure would penalize doctors who refuse to turn over patient records to investigators, reduce the time for physicians to appeal disciplinary decisions and establish another category of punishment--the public reprimand.

The California Medical Board has no tools to discipline doctors whose actions are not so serious as to require suspension or removal of a license but are bad enough to warrant some punishment, said Dixon Arnett, the board’s executive director.

“I would venture that this is the most important consumer legislation passed so far during the Wilson Administration,” he said.

Steve Barrow, a lobbyist for the Center for Public Interest Law, a consumer watchdog group, said the legislation’s most important provision would require the medical board to disclose to inquiring patients any malpractice judgments exceeding $30,000 against their doctors, any criminal charges and any past disciplinary actions.

Last May, the Medical Board decided on its own to give consumers broader access to information about doctors, but its decision has yet to be implemented. Presley’s legislation would make those disclosures mandatory and ensure that future boards cannot rescind the decision. Arnett said the bill also resolves any question about whether the board has legal authority to make the disclosures. Some doctors have contended that the board has no authority to disclose malpractice judgments.

“Consumers will be able to now call the medical board and say ‘Gee, I’m about to disrobe in front of Dr. Smith, how does he stand with the state?’ And if Dr. Smith has malpractice judgments against him and a past disciplinary history, the patient can then decide he wants to keep his clothes on,” he said.

In other developments Thursday, the Senate Rules Committee postponed until today a decision on how to handle a controversial measure to enact changes in the state’s smog detection program. The bill would enhance the current system while still allowing about 9,000 service stations to operate smog inspection and repair centers.

State Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) asked that action on the bill be delayed so that he could talk to federal EPA Administrator Carol Browner, who opposes the bill and has argued that it does not go far enough to improve California’s program.

Browner has threatened to impose sanctions on the state if California does not move to a centralized inspection program, which the governor and many lawmakers from both parties oppose.

Roberti also disclosed that he had dropped for the year his efforts to limit the capacity of gun clips used in semi-automatic weapons. The bill was the one anti-gun measure to emerge following a disgruntled businessman’s rampage in a downtown San Francisco skyscraper that killed nine.

Times staff writers Virginia Ellis, Dan Morain and Daniel M. Weintraub contributed to this report.