Power Will Have a New Face in 1997-98 Assembly Session

The balance of power in the 80-member state Assembly was shifted from Republicans to Democrats by a relatively few thousand votes in the 1996 election. But there will be a dramatically different face on the power structure of the lower house when the lawmakers return to Sacramento next Monday.

Under the GOP in the last session, 25 of the 26 Assembly standing committees were chaired by white males. Now, with the Democrats in charge under Speaker Cruz Bustamante of Fresno, 11 women will chair committees, including such powerful bodies as Human Services, Appropriations, Budget and Education. Also, Latinos and blacks will hold a number of chairs, leaving white males in command of barely a third of the committees.

There also has been a geographic shift in power. Before term limits, Northern California lawmakers with considerable seniority in the Assembly dominated the choice committee assignments term after term. That has changed. Fourteen of the new chairmen and chairwomen are from Southern California, 11 are from the North and two are from the San Joaquin Valley. (There is one new committee.) Additionally, Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl of Santa Monica will be in the Assembly’s No. 2 position, as speaker pro tem.

A number of factors figure in the new makeup of the Assembly, which now more closely resembles the diversity of the state than at any time in recent history. A major one is the imposition of term limits, which went into full effect in the Assembly in the 1996 election; service in the Assembly is limited to three two-year terms and in the Senate to two four-year terms. The last of the veteran leaders were forced to retire.

For the same reason, this is the most inexperienced Legislature in this century. Not a single member of the new Assembly, including the speaker, has served more than four years. A number of the new chairmen and chairwomen are freshmen.

It’s uncertain what these changes will mean for the 1997-98 session, except that the legislators will be far less conservative than last year. In the end, the record will depend on the members’ political skills and acumen, their ability to quickly digest and analyze complex subjects, their powers of persuasion and their willingness to get along with their colleagues. An early test of the new leaders will be whether they can run the Assembly with a higher level of civility than was present this past year. That would be a commendable start.