<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : Can’t Weasel Out of This: Should Ferrets Be Legal?

Ferret this out: The war to legalize the ferret in California is about to heat up again.

Ferrets Anonymous, a San Diego-based group dedicated to the hyperactive critter with cat-like teeth, has restarted its campaign to legalize the animal as a pet in this state. “Ferrets have amazingly fun personalities and are highly engaging,” says Pat Wright, chairman of the ferrets group.

A bill legalizing the animal, authored by Assemblyman Jan Goldsmith (R-Poway), failed last year, partly because Goldsmith had fallen into Speaker Willie Brown’s bad graces. A new bill, this time authored by Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco), comes up for a hearing April 25 and ferret supporters think they’ll win. “The Northern California ferrets group, the California Domestic Ferret Assn., is united with Ferrets Anonymous on this goal,” Wright said.

Officials with the state Department of Fish and Game oppose lifting the ban, saying the weasel-like animal can be particularly vicious and can attack infants. They also could wipe out poultry and rabbit farms, officials say.

Cash Clout

The employers of lobbyists spent more than $279 million trying to influence state government in 1993-94, the last legislative session for which totals are available. Here are the top and bottom firms in lobbying expenditures.

TOP FIVE

Pacific Telesis Group: $4,826,670

California Medical Assn.: $4,109,661

California Teachers Assn.: $3,843,928

Assn. of California Insurance Cos.: $3,512,037

Western States Petroleum Assn.: $3,309,923

BOTTOM FIVE

Lincoln Property Co. NC Inc.: $7

Homeschool Assn. of California: $51

Old Republic Surety Co.: $54

Western Surety Co.: $54

United Hospital Assn.: $94

Source: Capitol Weekly

Compiled by NONA YATES/Los Angeles Times

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Wrong paper, bub: As if Assembly Speaker Willie Brown doesn’t have enough problems, a 30-year-old San Francisco law student has launched his campaign to win Brown’s 13th District seat by buying a full-page advertisement in the New York Times. Steve Phillips, in touting his platform favoring immigrants, affirmative action and the creation of jobs to combat crime, said, “The people who are paying attention to next year’s election are reading the New York Times, the opinion leaders.”

Brown, prohibited by term limits from running next year for reelection to the Assembly, said Phillips, a fellow Democrat, was wasting his money. “I don’t know anybody in my district who makes a decision based on what they read in the New York Times,” the Assembly leader sniffed.

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Going once, going twice. . .: A whopping $2 million was bid at an auction in San Francisco for the single greatest array ever offered of George Armstrong Custer memorabilia, including a 190-page unpublished manuscript written by a trooper who survived one of the battles at Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876.

Officials for Butterfield & Butterfield, the San Francisco firm that conducted the auction, discreetly demurred when asked who paid for what.

Among the successful bids was $165,000 for Custer’s personal cavalry battle flag, $66,000 for the gold braid shoulder knot from Custer’s cavalry uniform, $46,750 for the manuscript written by William Taylor and $77,000 for a revolver owned by Custer’s brother, Capt. Thomas Custer.

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No hugs: Told by the principal that she could no longer give hugs to kids at an elementary school in Hayward, something she loved to do, cafeteria supervisor Donna Jones quit her job. “I told him, you have allowed these kids to hug me for the last three years and they trust me,” Jones said. “It’s not that I want to touch all 453 kids at the school. But the ones that run up to me, that I already know,” deserve a hug.

Jim Hough, the principal at Schafer Park Elementary School, asked Jones and other school employees to stop hugging students because two parents complained. “Taking their concerns into consideration, as well as the job responsibilities of the noontime supervisor, I instructed people not to hug the children,” Hough said.

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Stop the Manhattanization! That’s the cry in San Francisco ever since Louis Snyder persuaded city planners to let him install a 17-by-23-foot Sony Jumbotron TV screen atop a three-story building overlooking Union Square. It reminds some offended San Franciscans of that gaudy giant screen above Times Square in New York.

“Do we want to turn Union Square into Times Square or Piccadilly Circus, or do we want to keep it uniquely San Francisco?” asked architect Robert Meyers, a planning consultant for San Francisco Beautiful, one of several groups vowing to fight the TV screen.

Snyder, who would like to see the $2.5-million device erected by next summer, counters that the San Francisco screen won’t rival the glitz and flash of Times Square.

For one thing, the sign above Times Square is twice as big and flashes messages to an average of 750,000 people who pass through the area each day, he points out.

“It would take the entire population of San Francisco to equal that,” Snyder said. For another, the screen will be turned off when not in use.

EXIT LINE

“L.A. is alive again!”

--UCLA forward Charles O’Bannon as hundreds of fans cheered the Bruins’ arrival back in earthquake-prone, riot-scarred, flood-ravaged, O.J.-crazy Los Angeles after winning the NCAA national championship over Arkansas, 89-78, in Seattle.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.