Dispute With Senate Unifies Torn Assembly : Legislature: House seeks to reclaim from Senate $1.3 million in funding for members’ offices. Feud paralyzes legislation as year’s session winds down.

Even though the 1995 legislative session has been marked by extraordinary partisan wrangling, state Assembly members finally have found an issue they can agree on: preservation of their own office budgets.

Self-interest of members on both sides of the aisle has cemented an unlikely alliance across the partisan spectrum, from liberal Democrats to staunch conservative Republicans.

On unanimous votes, they have revised scores of unrelated Senate bills to require the upper house to give back $1.3 million that Assembly members maintain was stolen earlier this summer by senators during state budget negotiations.

On Monday, the Senate received five bills with the financial strings attached. In response, the Senate, where members are just as dogged in their determination to hang onto the money, took no action on any Assembly bills.

As a result of the internal wrangling, lawmakers say, the legislative process is tied in knots, threatening passage of proposals to bail out Los Angeles and Orange counties and other major issues still to be resolved before lawmakers adjourn Friday until next year.

Although snits between the two chambers are not unusual, especially at the end of a session, the latest squabble stands out because of the Assembly’s unanimity and the sharp-tongued barbs traded by legislative leaders.

Assembly Democratic Leader Willie Brown of San Francisco cracked Monday that what Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer did to get the funds in the first place “makes John Dillinger look like a priest.”

Well, Lockyer told reporters, Brown “must be driving the getaway car.” Lockyer, though, left open the possibility that the dispute could be resolved by the end of the week.

The Legislature’s budget is about $130 million annually. Under a formula hammered out after the passage of Proposition 140, the term limits initiative that also cut the Legislature’s budget, the 80-member Assembly receives 60% of the money and the 40-member Senate gets 40%.

During budget negotiations this summer, Lockyer proposed shifting the formula by 1% to give his house another $1.3 million. Former Assembly Republican Leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga recalls that Lockyer “made a fairly compelling case” but failed to reach agreement with legislative leaders.

Undeterred, Lockyer quietly slipped an amendment into the huge budget bill anyway, after making a “confidential” call to Brown, the Assembly Speaker emeritus.

“I asked him what he would do if he were in my position,” Lockyer told a reporter Monday. “Willie said, ‘Your position has merit. I’d take the money.’ Willie knew it was in the bill.”

Brown dismissed Lockyer’s description of the events as “nonsense.”

The amendment became part of the state budget bill and sat on Assembly desks for almost a week. Lockyer noted that no one protested or even noticed.

But Mike Pottage, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Doris Allen (R-Cypress), said she was unaware of Lockyer’s maneuver until after the budget was approved. “It just snuck by,” Pottage said.

Lockyer said the change was necessary because the Senate is obligated to pay half of the joint expenses of the Assembly and Senate, yet the income is not split evenly.

The Senate leader said the extra money is chiefly to pay for staff salaries of new senators who moved from the Assembly and brought their highly paid employees with them.

Lockyer finds the united front he faces in the Assembly somewhat strange.

“The only thing they are able to be united on is their own personal expenditures. Here we have the so-called fiscal conservatives being more concerned with their personal offices” than deciding important public policy issues.

Lockyer said the cost to taxpayers of the Assembly shenanigans is mounting, including extra printing expenses and staff hours. Without providing a dollar figure, he estimated the cost so far as equivalent to the starting pay of “two new teachers, two police officers and two firefighters.”

While Lockyer was dead serious about the fight, others saw a humorous side.

Assemblyman Bernie Richter (R-Chico) passed out small packages of prunes to his colleagues with a short note saying his aim was “to prevent any stoppage of legislative action.”