Lawmakers Agree on at Least One Thing: Little Was Accomplished

The legislative session opened last December with a bitter partisan fight in the narrowly divided state Assembly. It ended Saturday with the power struggle still raging.

In the intervening months, the most dire prediction--that the contentious Assembly would grind to a halt--was, at times, fulfilled.

The inaction on big-picture issues prompted Assemblywoman Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey) to mark down her colleagues with a barely passing grade of D-minus.

“We’ve accomplished very little, and much of what we have accomplished has been not very good,” Bowen said. “The problem is that we’ve been stuck in political battles all year long. One recall after another. One special election after another.”

Republicans sounded no more impressed than Democrats with the Legislature’s accomplishments.

“I’d say this was the quintessential spin-your-wheels session,” said state Sen. Rob Hurtt of Garden Grove, who was elected Senate Republican Leader last month.

In assessing the progress of pro-business legislation, he said, “It doesn’t seem as though we’ve accomplished too much of substance.”

And the public noticed. A recent Times Poll found that most Californians are growing increasingly angry and cynical about the Legislature, believing it is a captive of special interests.

To be sure, lawmakers accomplished the bare minimum tasks. For instance, they passed a state budget--34 days late--that includes $1 billion more than Gov. Pete Wilson originally proposed for the state’s public school system and cut welfare by $395 million.

And with the clock running out, they also approved a financial bailout for Orange County, but only portions of the sought-after relief for Los Angeles County. They also acted to make earthquake insurance more available to homeowners and sent to the governor legislation requiring fluoridation of most California drinking water.

But this year’s session seemed to lack a unifying theme around which lawmakers could rally. Last year, for example, a large number of anti-crime bills, such as the “three strikes” sentencing law, made their way to the governor’s desk. In recent years, lawmakers stitched together compromises on reforming workers’ compensation insurance and enhanced environmental protections.

In 1995, though, on a wide range of issues, from building new schools to reducing taxes, lawmakers mostly deadlocked. Legislators, staff and lobbyists cite several reasons for the impasse: the narrow 41-39 Republican majority in the Assembly, while Democrats narrowly hold an edge in the Senate; term limits forcing the longtime incumbents out of the Legislature; the difficulty in attaining a two-thirds majority for programs that spend money, and the subordination of public policy to political gamesmanship.

The year opened with longtime Assembly Speaker Willie Brown turning seeming defeat into victory and remaining as leader even while his party was in the minority.

While there was a revolving door in the Assembly Speaker’s office--Brown was followed by two GOP lawmakers--Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer of Hayward has eclipsed Brown.

Lockyer, who became Senate leader in 1994, has solidified his position as the Capitol’s top Democrat, a role long occupied by Brown, who is now running for mayor of San Francisco.

Brown remained Speaker until June, even though Democrats in last November’s election lost their majority of more than two decades to the GOP. But with his support eroding, Brown engineered the election of Republican Doris Allen of Cypress as his successor. Facing a recall effort by her own party, Allen resigned last week after just three months in the job.

On Saturday, a tearful and angry Allen told state broadcasters in a Sacramento speech that Assembly Republican leaders were to blame for her problems and that Wilson failed to support her.

“It got tumultuous. It got ugly. It got vicious. It became something that was far more evil than anything I’ve ever been faced with or involved in,” she said. People ask, “ ‘Is it because you were a woman that you were not accepted?’ The answer to that is, that was a lot of it, that was a major part of it.”

At one point, Allen said “no one could have tried harder” and burst briefly into tears. “You have a vulnerable woman sitting here today. I’m tired,” she said, wiping her eyes.

Allen was replaced, with Brown’s help yet again, by Assemblyman Brian Setencich (R-Fresno), who has been in office less than a year. Setencich won with 41 votes, including those of all Assembly Democrats and two Republicans, Allen and himself.

Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove), Allen’s chief antagonist and the GOP leader in the lower house, acknowledged that the prolonged political chaos distracted lawmakers from tackling public policy issues harder.

“Many will argue that there wasn’t as much legislation passed or that the house was in turmoil. But . . . this is a change from a Willie Brown-dominated institution over the last 15 years . . . to an institution that now has a majority Republican makeup,” Pringle said.

“A change of that magnitude doesn’t happen easily,” added Pringle, who during the summer took over as the GOP leader, replacing Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga.

Many conservative Republicans think the inaction had a positive impact, believing that it was preferable to expansion of government involvement in the lives of Californians.

“That’s a changed attitude,” Lockyer said. “As soon as you have that, you can’t get the two-thirds vote” needed to do what he sees as “using government constructively to make big changes and make the state better.”

In this atmosphere of transition, Democrats played a largely defensive role on such issues as environmental legislation rather than striking out to expand such protections.

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, said his committee was successful this session in holding back a hostile Republican-led drive to substantially rewrite protections for endangered species.

In the end, both Democrats and Republicans were left to largely tout partial victories, embodied in scores of bills that cleared one house only to stall or meet defeat in the second house. Republicans, for example, cited a raft of tax-cut bills for business that were sent to the Senate, where Democrats took pride in scuttling the measures on grounds that the state could not afford the loss of billions of dollars.

The focus will shift next year to the elections that will consume the Capitol, as both Republicans and Democrats wage political war to control the Legislature, and Wilson makes his run for the presidency.

Republican lawmakers have made it clear they plan to make Lockyer their new poster child, attacking him as an ultra-liberal. They want to paint Lockyer as the chief impediment to advancing what they consider a pro-business agenda, with less government regulation and less exposure to civil lawsuits.

Meanwhile, Lockyer is deep into election strategizing and fund raising to keep Democrats in control of the Senate.

In the Senate, Republicans hope to pick up at least two seats, making it more difficult for Lockyer to blockade their programs.

Hurtt said that “Republicans are going to be more proactive, trying to move things. We’re going to keep the heat on.”

State Sen. Ken Maddy of Fresno, the senior Republican campaign strategist, said, “There are a lot of things you can do to put pressure on people who are on the margin,” meaning Democratic incumbents expected to face tough reelection contests.

GOP lawmakers have sought to advance their agenda, only to be thwarted by Lockyer and his 21 Democrats and two independents, Quentin Kopp of San Francisco and Lucy Killea of San Diego. Republicans total 17 in the 40-member Senate.

Lockyer said he is confident he can continue to bottle up GOP initiatives he describes as “a policy agenda that is anti-environment, anti-education, anti-consumer and anti-labor.”

“I’m not going to be changing my mind,” he said, “merely because they are advancing a new slogan or flexing a political muscle.”