Tape of Remark by Lawmaker Found Blank

In the annals of political intrigue, Assemblyman Carl Washington’s statement earlier this week that he voted for one lawmaker’s bill because that lawmaker supported one of Washington’s bills wasn’t even a third-rate burglary.

Still, Assembly officials, realizing that the freshman lawmaker’s comments might be viewed as an admission of a criminal violation, acknowledged Thursday that they tried to listen to the Assembly’s official audiotape of the committee hearing at which Washington made his statement.

When they did so, they discovered the tape is blank.

The discovery of the blank tape came after Rob Stutzman, spokesman for Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, told reporters that prosecutors would seek to review a copy of the tape to determine if Washington (D-Paramount) violated state laws against vote trading.

Informed Thursday by reporters that the tape is blank, Stutzman said simply: “We’ll have no comment on that.”

Officials said they were seeking to determine why the tape was blank--whether it was a result of equipment failure, operator error or perhaps a deliberate erasure.

Ironically, the tape was made only because the committee chairman, Assemblyman Dick Floyd (D-Wilmington), requested the taping. Floyd believed that reporters and other lawmakers had misquoted him at a committee hearing earlier in this session at which he was accused of making a racist remark.

Washington’s comment came during Wednesday’s Assembly Labor Committee meeting, when he announced that he was switching his position and voting for a bill by Assemblyman Ed Vincent (D-Inglewood) that would exempt bars and casinos from California’s ban on smoking that applies to most other workplaces.

“Mr. Vincent is not just a colleague of mine,” Washington said during Wednesday’s hearing. “Philosophically, I oppose this bill. I told him that. But he asked me to support him, as I asked him to vote on a bill I had in my district that was very urgent. So I am offering him a courtesy vote on this bill.”

Although Washington later insisted he was not trading his vote, his initial comment could be viewed as an admission of a violation of an anti-bribery section of the Penal Code. The law prohibits legislators from casting a vote on a bill in exchange for another lawmaker’s vote on another bill.

After learning of Washington’s statement, Jonathan Waldie, chief executive officer of the Assembly Rules Committee, requested that the tape be delivered to his office Wednesday night, and an aide to the Labor Committee complied.

“They were in the sealed envelope,” said Bob Giroux, the Labor Committee consultant who delivered the tape. “I didn’t listen to them.”

Waldie discovered that one side of the tape had part of the committee hearing on the tobacco bill. But on the flip side, where Washington’s comments would have been, the tape was blank.

“It’s not a happy day for me, believe me,” Waldie said.

Waldie said he was trying to contact the sergeant-at-arms who was responsible for making the tape to determine “whether it was operator error or equipment failure.” The sergeant was not at work on Thursday.

“What can you say?” said Ron Gray, spokesman for Speaker Cruz Bustamante.

Given that this summer is the 25th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, staffers were quick to make the connection to the infamous 18 1/2-minute gap on one of President Richard Nixon’s tapes.

Referring to Nixon’s secretary, Gray said, “The ghost of Rose Mary Woods is wandering the halls.”