City Hall Sharply Divided Over Latest Round of Pork Politics

The proposal to license those cute, snout-nosed, potbellied pigs has become the biggest political hot potato in City Hall since Police Chief Willie L. Williams was accused of accepting freebies in Las Vegas.

For the past year or so, representatives of the 4,000 potbellied pig owners in Los Angeles have lobbied the City Council to rewrite zoning laws that prohibit pigs in residential areas and adopt an ordinance to have them licensed, just as the city licenses dogs and cats.

But the proposal has caused a rift in the city family, with the Department of Animal Regulation supporting the idea and the Planning Department adamantly opposed.

Several months ago, the council’s Public Safety Committee supported the licensing idea after receiving a positive report on the proposal from animal regulation officials.

Animal regulation officials said the petite porkers are clean, smart and very little trouble if owners keep them out of the kitchen and on a strict diet of vegetables and exercise.

But the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee rejected the idea last month, citing a Planning Department report that criticized the proposal, saying that pigs are, well, pigs and don’t merit a change in the zoning laws.

The squabble continued this week. Instead of making a final decision, the City Council decided to refer the issue back to committee for further study in hopes of resolving the debate between the two departments.

But when Councilman Hal Bernson, the head of the planning committee, learned afterward that his colleagues had referred the issue back to his committee, he blew up.

“I don’t want the damn thing,” he bellowed across council chambers. “We acted on it once. I’m not going to take it again.”

But it was too late. The council had acted.

So Bernson, who is known for being a bit pigheaded on some issues, vowed not to take action on the item. Instead, he said pig owners should simply keep the pigs quiet and try not to disturb their neighbors.

“If people don’t complain, there is no problem,” he said.

Bernson then suggested that maybe the Public Safety Committee can deal with it.

But representatives of Councilwoman Laura Chick, who heads that panel, say her committee approved the licensing idea already and it’s now up to Bernson’s panel to straighten out the zoning issues with the Planning Department.

If neither panel takes action in 30 days, the entire issue falls back in the lap of the City Council.

Grapes of Wrath

Was Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) serious Thursday when he said he might be willing to quit Congress to become a busboy in Rep. Sonny Bono’s (R-La Quinta) restaurant? Or was he just trying to teach his colleague a thing or two about supply and demand?

Berman made the quip at a congressional hearing on whether the United States ought to allow immigrants to enter the country for temporary stints as farm workers. Berman vehemently opposes such a plan, saying there is an adequate labor supply already and that such guest worker programs contribute to exploitation.

Bono argued that farmers are having the same difficult time rounding up workers as he had finding busboys at the Italian restaurant he used to run in Palm Springs.

“It was impossible to get busboys,” Bono said. “There was an obvious void that needed to be filled. . . . It’s not that you’re a bad guy that you’re offering minimum wage. That’s all that you can handle.”

Berman suggested that the real answer is for the farmers, and perhaps Bono himself, to improve wages and working conditions to the point at which prospective employees want the jobs. Berman said he might even take a position in Bono’s eatery if the price was right, and that many others might consider agricultural jobs if compensation improved.

“The suggestion that there is an impending shortage of U.S. farm workers is a falsehood foisted on the public and on the Congress by agricultural employers who prefer foreign farm workers,” Berman said. “Guest workers, no less than the undocumented, are powerless to prevent inhumane and illegal wages and working conditions because they are fired and deported if they challenge those abuses.”

One of the experts testifying at the hearing agreed with Berman’s analysis and suggested that he might switch careers, too.

“At a certain wage, even I might be willing to pick grapes rather than appear before you,” said J. Edward Taylor, a professor of agricultural economics at UC Davis.

But Bono was not buying it, nor were his Republican colleagues. They intend to propose a guest worker program in the coming weeks.

Help Wanted

It sounded like a political broadside, a call to ideological arms for an oppressed citizenry. But in fact the memo that recently circulated among government agencies was simply the announcement of a job opening at the offices of state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica).

The job is for a field representative to work out of Hayden’s West Los Angeles office for a salary of up to $40,000 a year.

But consider the duties that Hayden has lined up for his representative.

“The purpose of Senator Hayden’s Community Office lies in identifying and investigating scandal and wrongdoing by the area’s government agencies that harm the people--and organizing community activists to protect our residents. Business as usual has gotten us here; only strong challenges to this Special Interest State from the community can reverse the trend.”

Later in the job description, Hayden describes the most desirable attribute of a candidate as “ideological consistency with the office.” It goes on to say that Hayden’s staffers are “about exposing official corruption that harms people, and organizing coalitions to end it. Hayden staffers share this outlook and are comfortable fighting those responsible for such wrongdoing.”

Of course, Hayden is still a politician, so part of the job description is getting publicity for the senator when his office uncovers wrongdoing by the “Special Interest State.”

The memo says: “Both as part of our empowerment strategy and to continually identify new scandals, we need to aggressively communicate our findings and actions through the media and network of organizations.”

Changing the World

Speaking of Hayden, Scott Schreiber, 41, will probably find the task of unseating the senator more difficult than his day job of running a Sun Valley firm that refurbishes laser printer cartridges.

But that’s the goal Schreiber, of West Hills, has set for himself as the Republican Party’s lone standard-bearer in the 23rd Senate District contest. As the only GOP candidate, the March 26 primary is a gimme for Schreiber. The big test comes in November, when he faces Hayden mano a mano.

So what drives Schreiber, who is active in a program to expand business opportunities in the Valley, to run against the 54-year-old Hayden, the former enfant terrible of the New Left who now represents a district that stretches from the aging-yuppie environs of Santa Monica to suburban Calabasas?

“I grew up in this area, and as I watched my own teenage son growing up, I realized how different things are,” Schreiber said. “My mom would tell me to be home by 6 o’clock and there were no sexual predators or kids with guns to worry about. I’m afraid for my son and the kind of world he’s growing up in, and I wanted to do something to change it.”

Also running in the 23rd District--a seat Hayden won in 1992 after a tough and expensive fight against state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles)--are Charles Black, a Libertarian Party member; Robert P. Swanson, a Natural Law Party member, and Shirley Rachel Isaacson of the Peace and Freedom Party.

Filthy Lucre

Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson says one thing he will not miss when he retires from Congress next year is the panhandling aspect of the job--hitting people up for spare change.

The Woodland Hills Democrat said a good portion of the second year of each congressional term is spent raising the money to run the next campaign. Beilenson, who declined money from political action committees, said he found the process distasteful, yet essential.

“You have to think how many people you know who can give you some money,” he said. “It’s a huge and very unpleasant undertaking. The job requires almost continual money raising. That’s something I find difficult and demeaning, raising half a million dollars every two years. One of the big reliefs is that I won’t have to ask my friends for money anymore.”

The experience has also led Beilenson to endorse campaign finance reform, including some form of public funding of congressional races.

As for Beilenson’s post-House career, that’s up in the air. “I hope to find a position somewhere inside or outside of the government where I can be of some use on the issues I care about,” he said, ruling out two lucrative professions that are popular among former lawmakers--lobbying and lawyering.