Not an Elevated Debate : Panel’s GOP Members Vote to Cut Costs--and Assembly Elevator Operator’s Job; Democrats Say She Got the Shaft

SACRAMENTO — Nothing personal, said thrift-minded Republican Assemblyman Bruce Thompson of Fallbrook, but Patricia Armentrout will have to go.

With that, Thompson and other GOP members of the Assembly Rules Committee prevailed Monday on a 7-3 partisan vote to eliminate the operator’s job in the Assembly members’ private elevator.

Over objections by Democrats, Armentrout will be laid off after 2 1/2 years on the job, her services to be replaced by a row of automatic buttons. The Assembly expects to save $30,000 a year.

With her departure as of June 1, the Capitol’s lone elevator piloted full time by an operator will be the Leatherette-padded elevator cage serving state senators, who plan no changes.

Seldom quick to surrender a perk, Sacramento lawmakers have ridden chauffeured elevators long after public areas of the building had dispensed with full-time operators.

But enough is enough, Thompson said, and now that Republicans are in charge of the Assembly and its house-managing Rules Committee, it was time for a money-saving change.

The elevator was built to run either automatically or manually, and if members object to the change, “maybe the walk up the stairs will do us all good,” Thompson said. The elevator serves seven floors; the Assembly chamber is on the third floor.

*

Armentrout declined interviews. But Thompson said earlier that he told her that the decision “was nothing personal” and that she said she understood. “I consider her a very nice person and like her,” he said.

But “if we’re going to be Republicans, let’s do Republican things. And that is to cut back where we can,” Thompson said.

At the Rules Committee hearing, Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco) and Thompson traded verbal shots. Burton accused Thompson of wanting to “look good in the paper” and asked, “How much of your personal staff are you willing to get rid of to save money?”

The two then challenged one another to propose wiping out funds for the entire Assembly support staff, but it was a bluff that no one called.

*

Relief operators predicted trouble ahead for the self-run Assembly members’ car.

Said one: “It’s the little things they’ll miss: ‘Wait for me’ and ‘Am I late?’ and ‘Take me straight to four, I’m in a hurry.’ ”

Democrats complained that “it’s silly” and “inhumane” to lay off Armentrout, who may have difficulty getting another state job. But it was Democrats who were in charge when elevator operators got the ax in the last round of layoffs three years ago.

At that time, operators were taken off all four public elevators in the main Capitol building. A little later, buttons and a disembodied voice announcing floor arrivals replaced operators in a bank of elevators serving the adjoining annex building.

From now on, in addition to the one full-time job that the Senate elevator provides, part-time operators will work the Capitol’s public elevators when tourist traffic picks up this summer.