Back With a Buzz of Tension

Sacramento has enjoyed an unusually bucolic August, with comfortable temperatures, legislators out of town and the Capitol corridors occupied mostly by tourists, not scurrying staff aides and lobbyists, ears to cell phones.

The idyll ends Monday as the Legislature resumes work for four weeks before the 1999 session ends. On the plate are hundreds of bills awaiting final action. Whether this proves to be a productive windup to the session depends largely on the ability of Democrats to get along with Democrats, specifically the leaders of the Senate and the Assembly on the one hand and first-term Gov. Gray Davis on the other.

Davis, Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and Senate President Pro Tem John Burton have sought to play down the tension that marked the run-up to the recess, but discord lurks just below the surface.

A possible flash point is pending legislation to reform California’s managed health care systems. In July, Davis angered the legislative leaders by going around them to slow the rush of HMO legislation headed for his desk; while he was doing this, health industry officials held a fund-raising event for him. At the least, Davis’ run-around attempt was a breach of Capitol etiquette. Villaraigosa and Burton told Davis to keep his nose out of the legislative process. The governor retorted that it was the Legislature’s job to “implement my vision,” an imperial remark that angered lawmakers.

Davis did have a point about the flood of HMO legislation, though. As many as 70 managed care bills were cruising through the Senate and Assembly with little apparent effort by legislators to consolidate them into a coherent package. Davis says his own polling indicates no public groundswell for changing managed care systems--although public polls nationally have put HMO reforms near the top of public concerns--and he warned that stepped-up regulation would prove too costly to the health care industry. Villaraigosa and Burton have established HMO reform as one of their priorities, which it should be. Thus the standoff.

Part of the tension comes from Davis’ determination to be a business-friendly centrist. This is the first time in 16 years that voters have entrusted control of both the Legislature and the governor’s office to a single party. Villaraigosa and Burton lead strong Democratic majorities that chafed for years as then Gov. Pete Wilson, a conservative, vetoed their pet bills. They saw this year, under a Democratic governor, as the time to at last advance their agendas, including major priorities of organized labor.

A little tension, of course, is part and parcel of the separation of powers, and Democrats even managed to negotiate some complex issues with Wilson despite the antagonism.

Californians expect their leaders to work together with mutual understanding and respect as the session resumes. They don’t so much care who gets the credit or blame or who has the power to do what. What they care about is getting the job done.