NEWS ANALYSIS : Assembly Public Safety Committee Turns Tough : Crime: The once-liberal panel took a beating in the news media after the Polly Klaas murder. Recently it has approved a succession of law-and-order bills.

For conservative lawmakers, it is an oft-spoken adage--the Assembly’s Democrat-dominated Public Safety Committee is the killing field for legislation meant to clamp down on criminals.

But in these tough-on-crime times, the powerful panel has become a target of scorn from many quarters, and the longtime bastion of liberal views on criminal justice has shown signs of altering course.

In the aftermath of high-profile crimes such as the kidnaping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in Northern California, newspaper columnists and editorial writers bludgeoned the panel in print. Radio talk show hosts heaped on ridicule. Criticism is likely to come next month at Gov. Pete Wilson’s “crime summit” in Los Angeles.

Bruised by the attacks and wary of alienating voters in an election year, members of the committee returned to Sacramento for the start of the 1994 session and a majority promptly approved a succession of tough law-and-order bills.

“We’re getting bills out I never thought we’d get out,” said Assemblyman Richard K. Rainey (R-Walnut Creek), a former Contra Costa County sheriff and current committee member. “It’s definitely a different year.”

Included in the legislation that has survived safety committee scrutiny is a Rainey bill making it a felony for convicted sex offenders to avoid registering with police, and another once-stalled Republican measure toughening the state’s pornography laws. Most notably, the panel approved several different versions of the headline-grabbing “three strikes and you’re out” proposal, which would put repeat felons behind bars for life. Last year, the idea was waylaid in the public safety committee.

The string of GOP successes is largely the product of a key shift in the committee’s power base with the recent addition of Assemblyman Mike Gotch, a moderate Democrat from San Diego. With Gotch aboard, the eight-member committee now has two Republicans and three moderate Democrats offsetting a trio of liberals.

“It brings an interesting new dynamic,” said Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-Placentia), a 15-year Assembly veteran who served on the committee during his first term. “How it will play out I’m just not sure.”

Some Republicans predict that once public attention turns away from crime, the committee will revert to its old ways. “We’ve got to strike while the iron is hot,” Rainey said. “As soon as the heat is off, they’ll go back to the way they were.”

Rainey’s words proved prophetic last week when the committee, acting like its old self, dashed a measure from one of the panel’s own Democratic members. The bill by Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove) would have prohibited inmates imprisoned on a murder conviction from having overnight visits with spouses.

Despite that rebuff, Umberg remains hopeful the panel will take a harder line on crime. “This firestorm (of public opinion) has caused the Legislature to refocus and has hopefully changed some attitudes,” Umberg said. “In my view, that’s a positive.”

Even moderates like Umberg, a former prosecutor planning a run for state attorney general, have felt the heat from those critical of the committee’s work.

A few weeks ago, a pair of radio talk show hosts on KFI-AM in Los Angeles spent several days whipping up their audience with discussion of the Klaas tragedy. Umberg and other members of the Public Safety Committee, they growled, had failed the electorate by refusing to approve the “three strikes” measure last year.

Never mind that the Legislature would have needed to pass such a law nearly a decade ago to snare Richard Allen Davis, the repeat felon accused of murdering Klaas while on parole after an eight-year stint behind bars. “The blood of Polly Klaas” is on the hands of the committee members, the talk show hosts declared.

Unfortunately, not every listener distinguished radio overkill from reality. Umberg, who debated the issue on air with the two hosts, received several death threats.

Such ugly utterances convince many liberal Democrats that the Klaas case has ignited the sort of mob mentality that will not produce intelligent, reasoned laws.

“Right now it’s like everyone is just piling on, trying to dream up the most Draconian proposal they can,” said Assemblyman Tom Bates (D-Oakland), a liberal on the safety committee who has continued to oppose many of the anti-crime measures. “People need to understand that we’ve made our sentencing laws in California the toughest in the world and it simply has not worked. It hasn’t made us safer.”

Such beliefs have helped guide the Assembly Public Safety Committee for about a quarter-century. The panel has consistently stopped legislation the Democratic majority deemed reactionary or unconstitutional--everything from measures to strengthen death penalty laws to bills that would relax controls on firearms.

“They have long clung to a general philosophy that the way to stop crime is to address it as a social welfare issue, not to punish people who do wrong,” the GOP’s Johnson said.

But many former staffers, Democrats and Republicans alike, say the panel has often performed a worthy service by killing half-baked legislation whipped up by lawmakers out to appear tough on crime. Rejected out of hand, for example, was a proposal some years ago to castrate repeat rape offenders.

Unfortunately, critics contend, the committee also has slammed the door on good ideas.

“Reason did not always prevail,” said Judge Gary Mullen, who was appointed to the Sacramento County Superior Court in 1990 after staff stints with the state Senate and the California District Attorneys Assn. “Historically, the committee has been absolutely stacked, in some years to such a degree that it’s essentially been controlled by the ACLU and the criminal defense bar. Even moderate legislation was killed.”

The committee’s actions have been oriented as much toward politics as policy, insiders say. By scuttling bills before they reached the Assembly floor, the panel has protected Democratic members--particularly those in vulnerable districts--from having to cast politically damaging votes that Republicans might use against them on Election Day.

Republicans have consistently groused about the makeup of the committee, which has a smaller percentage of GOP representatives than any other in the Assembly. Under rules calling for proportional representation on all committees, the eight-member panel should have three Republicans, but in recent years has had only two.

The reason, Republicans say, is simple: Assembly Speaker Willie Brown has historically packed the panel with liberals, often from safe districts, so tough crime legislation stays bottled up while moderate Democrats like Umberg and Assemblyman Bob Epple (D-Cerritos), the committee chairman, can cast law-and-order votes that play well in their blue-collar districts.

Umberg rejects such Machiavellian characterizations. “I’ve had my own frustrations in that committee. I’ve had bills watered down or killed,” he said. “But I think those actions are born of true philosophical differences between members of the committee and not political machinations.”

Even some critics concede the committee gauntlet has occasionally yielded legislation pleasing to the toughest crime fighter. Prison construction bills usually trundle through, and help for law enforcement agencies is routinely embraced. When a rash of freeway shootings hit Southern California a few years ago, the committee reacted within weeks to produce new legislation.

Mullen was consistently irked by the panel’s actions, but he retains fond memories of working with Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco), a former safety committee chairman who remains a liberal heavyweight on the panel, on a pair of bills in 1990 to reform the state penal code from top to bottom. The legislation was vetoed.

“He, of all the past chairmen, was a realist,” Mullen said. “You could sit down and talk to the man. We didn’t get a lot, but what we did get was extremely significant.”

Even as liberals and conservatives in the Legislature continue to disagree on solutions, Burton suggests the gulf may be narrowing. “Times have changed,” he said. “People realize you can’t give criminals cookies and milk and a pat on the head and say, ‘Now be good boys.’ In the same vein, I don’t think most Republicans really believe you’ve got to lock them up on the first offense and throw away the key. You’ve got to take a shot at rehabilitating these first-time offenders.”

Bates hopes the Legislature will get beyond the current fervor and seize on innovative programs that provide focused help to “at-risk” families and struggling youngsters. The liberal lawmaker also wants to see alternatives to prison such as well-supervised work programs for drug dealers and other nonviolent offenders.

“If people are vengeful and have blood in their eyes, politicians will reflect that,” Bates said. “I have to hope the electorate will come off its emotional frenzy and realize that the direction we’re now in hasn’t worked.”