Boland Seeks to Abolish Office of Lieutenant Governor : Government: Proposed constitutional amendment would give powers to attorney general. Democrats call it a partisan ploy.

In a radical proposal that would change the way California has conducted government for a century and boost the likelihood of a presidential run by Gov. Pete Wilson, Assemblywoman Paula Boland on Tuesday introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish the office of lieutenant governor.

Boland (R-Granada Hills) said her measure to transfer the powers and duties of lieutenant governor to the attorney general would save taxpayer funds by eliminating a superfluous position.

“It’s a total waste of a million-and-a-quarter dollars,” Boland said, referring to the annual budget for the lieutenant governor’s office. “It’s an absolute do-nothing office.”

But political observers quickly pointed out that the proposal would score a double coup for the GOP if approved. It would get rid of a powerful Democrat, Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, and remove an obstacle that Wilson has said puts “the chill” on the idea of running for President: the rule that Davis would succeed him if Wilson won election to the White House.

Under Boland’s bill, Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren would take over from Wilson as the state’s chief executive, a post for which many believe Lungren is being primed to run in 1998.

“Quite clearly, this has to do with the dynamics of this governor, this lieutenant governor and this attorney general,” political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe said. The proposal addresses “the speculation that (Wilson) is thinking about running for President and the grumbling out there that he cannot because he’s handcuffed by a Democratic lieutenant governor.”

Jeffe said the bill’s prospects of clearing the Legislature are slim, since Democrats still control the Senate and stand even with Republicans in the Assembly. As a constitutional amendment, the measure would have to earn a two-thirds majority in both houses as well as ratification by voters.

“It ain’t gonna happen. No Democrat in the world is going to vote to get rid of Gray Davis,” Jeffe said.

Democrats denounced the proposal as a partisan ploy that would save little money while attempting to boost GOP fortunes.

“It’s obviously a thinly veiled attempt to promote Pete Wilson’s presidential campaign . . . and to do a big favor for Dan Lungren,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar).

Boland denied that her bill had anything to do either with a possible presidential run by Wilson. She said she has studied the notion of abolishing the lieutenant governorship since she was first elected in 1990.

“It’s time that the Democrats figure out that the voters are saying, ‘Cut out this nonsense of partisan politics and give us lean, mean government,’ ” Boland said, adding that Wilson “doesn’t even know I have this bill.”

A spokesman in the governor’s office said Wilson, in Washington for a conference, had not seen the proposal and would decline comment.

The blunt and occasionally caustic comments on the measure Tuesday were a further marker of how bitter the partisan battle in Sacramento has become in recent weeks. With the Assembly leadership crisis resolved through an extraordinary maneuver by Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), tension and distrust between the two main parties is running high as each side struggles to gain the upper hand.

Jeffe said Boland’s measure appears in line with “the ‘getcha’ politics we’ve seen up there for a long time.”

But Boland said her bill has nothing to do with ousting Davis as lieutenant governor simply because he is a Democrat. “If it was a Republican, I would still be doing it,” she said.

Currently, California is one of nine states where the governor and lieutenant governor represent different parties.

In 24 states, voters elect the two officers on a ticket.

Eight states do without elected lieutenant governors altogether, but in none of them is the attorney general designated as next in line to the chief executive.

Garry South, chief of staff for Davis, said the lieutenant governor’s position in California has historically served as a counterbalance to the governor’s power.

“Voters have expressed a preference to have some checks inside the executive branch by having a governor of one party and a lieutenant governor of another party,” he said, noting that the two offices have been divided by party for the past 16 years.