Audiotape Holds Yaroslavsky’s Interest Before Verbal Debate

COMIC RELIEFCouncilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents a growing chunk of the San Fernando Valley, can’t be too badly faulted for his bravura. After all, he is arguably one of the council’s most engaging and intelligent members.

But a display this week of Yaroslavsky’s talents was seen as somewhat cocky.

The setting was the council debate of Councilman Hal Bernson’s plan to require the city--by force of law--to annually earmark enough money each year for the next five or six years to gradually increase the LAPD to 10,000 officers, or 2,400 more than the department now has.

As Bernson and other measure supporters labored over their views, Yaroslavsky listened (via earphones) at his council seat to an audiotape of comedian Tom Lehrer, oblivious to the debate going on around him.

After getting his chuckles, Yaroslavsky issued the most spirited attack of the day against the Bernson proposal, which was defeated. By the way, the tape belonged to Councilwoman Ruth Galanter.

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FOOD FOR THOUGHTThe council’s Valley delegation took the lead this week in excoriating the Department of Water and Power (known by some City Hall wits as the Department of Waste and Privilege) for the nearly $800,000 cost of providing catered food to its supervisors who worked during last month’s nine-day strike.

A Bernson motion, approved unanimously, to audit the catering contract was seconded by Laura Chick, Joel Wachs and Richard Alarcon, the four all-Valley council lawmakers.

Chick brought a pie and muffins to the council meeting that she’d purchased at a discount grocery store, to dramatize her indignation about the cost of feeding the supervisors (their baked goods bill was $118,000).

Alarcon, normally calm, was in high dudgeon too. “I feel a certain sense of rape. We have been violated by this department,” the northeast Valley councilman told DWP chief Dan Waters. Alarcon claimed he could feed his household of five for four months on what DWP spent feeding one employee for nine days.

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A BREATH OF SCANDALThe subject of the congressional hearing was about as dry as they come: improper business practices in the municipal securities market. Yet Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale) raised the political temperature a few degrees Thursday by dropping the name of state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, the undeclared but front-running Democratic candidate for governor of California.

Among several arcane topics under discussion (“secondary market disclosure” and “municipal market price transparency”) was the question of political contributions by security firms to elected officials.

The Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications and finance had previously heard testimony about the perception of impropriety when contributions go to officials, like Brown, who can influence the awarding of contracts for servicing bond offerings. California is a major player in the $1.2-trillion municipal bond market.

The issue has been brought to a boil after New York City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman recently lost a reelection bid that was badly damaged when ethical questions were raised about a 1992 campaign loan from a bond underwriter.

Moorhead, an ex officio member of the subcommittee, began his questioning of the several expert witnesses by alluding to the Holtzman scandal and mentioning Brown in the same breath.

The Democrats were waiting. At an earlier hearing Democratic New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio had been the subject of a similar maneuver.

Rep. Richard Lehman (D-North Fork) was soon waving written testimony from Brown that outlined the steps she has taken, some just this week, to limit the sources of potentially questionable contributions. “This would not have been brought up if she were not a Democratic candidate for governor,” Lehman said pointedly.

The avuncular Moorhead, in seeming disbelief, said his remarks were not intended as a “personal attack.”

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BREAKAWAY BERMAN?When Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) broke with his longtime labor allies last week to announce his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, it represented the second time in recent years he has antagonized close allies on a high-profile issue.

In 1990, he agonized before voting to authorize then-President Bush to proceed with the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s aggression in Kuwait. This prompted an angry response from many liberal friends and supporters, some of whom dated back to Berman’s days as an anti-Vietnam war activist.

Berman said the two votes reflect no ideological shift but rather his refusal to give unconditional support to major political interest groups. Although a member of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council, Berman’s voting record generally remains progressive. In 1992, he was given an 85% rating by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, 100% by the American Civil Liberties Union and 73% by the Committee on Political Education of the AFL-CIO.

He has tended to be somewhat more hawkish on foreign policy. The American Security Council, a pro-defense group, gave him a 50% rating on key votes last year.

“I’ve never liked protectionism,” Berman says, referring to his pro-NAFTA position. “And I’ve never been a pure pacifist. I think there are times when America needs to use force.”

If peace groups or organized labor expected his automatic support on those two high-stakes issues, he says, “They just misunderstood me.”

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MAKING A DIFFERENCERepublican Gov. Pete Wilson has helped hand Democratic Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman what she considers one of the sweetest victories in her brief legislative career.

At a recent Sacramento ceremony, the governor signed the San Fernando Valley legislator’s hard-fought measure to raise California’s cigarette tax to help pay for breast cancer programs. The 2-cents-per-pack increase is expected to bring in about $38 million a year for breast cancer research and detection, including more screening, mammograms and biopsies for uninsured women.

In signing the measure, Wilson overrode objections from his own Department of Finance and the state’s business community. In fact, Wilson said he was eager to sign the measure to raise awareness of the deadly disease.

Accompanied by his wife, Gayle, and flanked by two dozen breast cancer survivors, Wilson told the bill’s supporters gathered at a Sacramento hospital that “there are some days when you go home feeling somewhat questionable about what you’ve chosen to do . . . (but) . . . there are other days when in fact you know that you have made a difference. Barbara Friedman is enjoying one of those days.”

Friedman acknowledged that the successful struggle to maneuver the bill through the Legislature was one of the most satisfying of her legislative career, which began when she won a 1991 special election. Indeed, she said, many supporters, especially breast cancer survivors, viewed the legislative process as part of a life-and-death struggle.

“Breast cancer is not just a personal tragedy, it’s a public health disaster,” Friedman said. “It’s rare that people have a sense that their life depends on legislation that you’re working on,” she said.

This column was reported by Times staff writers John Schwada in Los Angeles, Alan C. Miller in Washington, D.C., and Mark Gladstone in Sacramento.

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