Brown Indicates Willingness to Share Speaker’s Powers

Former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown proposed new ideas Thursday for resolving the contentious Assembly speakership fight, including a newly expressed willingness to share the Speaker’s gavel with a partisan rival.

Democrat Brown set out the latest deal-making package in a letter to Republican Assembly leader Jim Brulte, who has proposed a solution of his own to the impasse, also recommending that the Speaker’s powers be trimmed.

The Assembly on Dec. 5 deadlocked on a 40-40 partisan vote on the speakership and will be unable to function until the logjam is broken. The Legislature reconvenes Wednesday.

Brown on Thursday attacked one feature of Brulte’s plan, contending that it needlessly calls for a constitutional amendment and would thus take two years to apportion power fairly in the evenly divided lower house. But some points of Brown’s latest plan appeared similar to some of Brulte’s ideas.

Both men call for stripping the Speaker of key powers and assigning new authority to other bodies--the Assembly Rules Committee under Brulte’s proposals, and to the party caucuses under Brown’s plan.

Brown’s plan also recommends balancing membership of the Rules Committee between the two political parties with a member of each party serving as a co-chair. Currently, the majority party runs the Rules Committee, holding sway over the fate of legislation.

The co-chairs of the Rules Committee, under the Brown plan, would also serve as “presiding officers of the house,” in effect replacing the position of a single Speaker. Brown’s top aide, chief of staff Michael Galizio, said it would be inaccurate to describe the two leaders as “co-speakers” since the office of Speaker has to meet certain requirements.

It is unclear what would become of the traditional office of Speaker under the plan, but Galizio said that Brown would be willing to accept a “co-leadership” of the Assembly for the first time in the 14 years since he was elected Speaker.

Previously, Brown has ruled out divvying up the Speaker’s powers and privileges. “This co-speakership stuff doesn’t work. You have to have to one boss,” Brown told The Times recently. At the time Brown proposed that Democrats hold the speakership for part of the next two years and the Republicans the remainder.

Brulte’s plan calls for a Rules Committee apportioned on the basis of party membership of the entire body. Under the current membership, with 40 Republicans and 39 Democrats, Republicans would hold a one-seat edge on the Rules Committee, which would be run by the Speaker.

Aides to Brown and Brulte on Thursday said the two leaders seemed close to agreement in principle. No formal meetings between the two are planned, aides said, although “lines of communications are open,” according to a Brulte aide.

Asked if the latest pitch from Brown represented new agreement with Brulte’s proposals, Galizio said, “Nobody is agreeing with anybody. We have all developed our plans in a vacuum because the Republicans wouldn’t talk.” But he added that “it’s amazing how close we are in terms of the concepts.”

Brulte’s spokesman, Phil Perry, said the latest flow of correspondence “shows we’re closer together than we are apart.”