Assembly Passes Water Measure : Capitol: After compromises are made, legislators approve plan to put $1.9-million bond issue on March ballot.

After hours of rancorous debate and behind-the-scenes deal-making, the state Assembly passed a $1.9-billion water bond issue Friday, minutes before adjourning for the year.

The measure, sent to Gov. Gray Davis for his expected signature, would increase water supplies in Southern California and provide flood control for northern areas of the state.

Swayed by promises from Davis that at least $40 million would be spent on Republican projects, 15 GOP lawmakers switched their votes to give Democrats the two-thirds majority required to OK the measure for the March 2000 ballot.

“This has been a two-year ordeal to put a water bond on the ballot,” said a jubilant Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles). “This was big.”

In the end, it was the personal intervention of Davis, who strongly supported the bond proposal, that persuaded Republicans to give up their opposition and take his offer to channel more money to projects they supported.

“He just charmed them,” one Democratic staffer said.

The Republicans demanded--and Davis agreed--to put the promises in writing: $20 million in next year’s budget to finish paying for a study of the state’s water needs and another $20 million from the bond issue that would be used for projects in GOP districts.

Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach), leader of the Assembly’s minority Republicans, said Davis also gave them a commitment that he would implement the results of the study even if it called for the construction of additional reservoirs to store water.

“That [reservoirs] has never been part of our debate with the liberals,” he said.

The bond issue had cleared the Senate on Thursday night but bogged down Friday in the Assembly, when angry Republicans complained that Democrats had sidestepped a critical future need--the construction of more reservoirs so that vast amounts of water could be stored in wet years for use in dry years.

“We have condemned the next generation to desperate measures,” said Assemblyman Bill Leonard (R-San Bernardino).

It later passed 65-11.

Calling the bond issue a “beautiful hodgepodge of political pork,” Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) said the proposal earmarked funds for dozens of lawmakers’ pet projects but ignored the state’s desperate need for more reservoir storage.

His remarks drew the ire of Assemblywoman Helen Thomson (D-Davis), a Northern California lawmaker who had lived through several floods. “You call this political. You call it full of pork. I think you are full of something else,” she said angrily.

After the first vote when Republican opposition prevented Democrats from getting a two-thirds majority, the proposal seemed destined for defeat.

It was the second time in a week that Assembly Republicans, outnumbered and powerless on most issues, had used the two-thirds requirement to block a Democrat-backed proposal. Earlier, they had killed a proposed constitutional amendment by Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) that would have provided millions of dollars for transportation.

Even after Davis stepped in, a few Republicans, including Baugh, voted against the measure, saying they objected to a decision to move it from the November 2000 ballot to the March ballot. The decision to make it March came after polling showed that it would have overwhelming support.

Assemblyman Mike Machado (D-Linden), one of the architects of the bond issue, said it was carefully designed to provide something for all the water factions in the state--farmers and environmentalists, Northern California and Southern California.

To attract support in Southern California, the proposal funneled millions of dollars into projects that would expand underground storage, boost recycling and encourage water conservation. It earmarked $235 million for flood protection and watershed improvements along the Santa Ana River.

For flood-prone Northern California, it set aside money to improve levees and finance flood control projects. Other funds were provided to restore wildlife habitat and protect salmon. Agricultural interests were given funds to help control pollution from farm runoff.

Several projects were added to the proposal in an attempt to win support from individual Republican lawmakers. They included funds for pollution control at Huntington Beach, financing for a Kern River Parkway Project, and money for the establishment of a San Joaquin Valley Water Institute and a Delta Science Center.

In other action:

* The Legislature wrapped up its health care reform package Friday with a measure that would create a Department of Managed Care to assume HMO oversight.

Patient advocates, trial lawyers and health plan representatives all lauded the proposal, saying it will be the glue that holds the year’s other reforms together. It passed the Assembly with a 54-17 vote and went to the governor’s desk, where the rest of the package now awaits approval.

In addition to setting parameters for the new department, the administration played a key role in negotiating three other changes for patients accepted by the Legislature this week: easier access to second medical opinions, additional power to appeal medical disputes, and the ability to sue health plans for damages. The governor’s signature is expected on those and on measures to extend coverage to prescription contraceptives, cancer screening and diabetes tests.

It is unclear whether Davis will support lawmakers’ proposed requirement that health insurance plans cover severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia. But on Friday, Davis spokesman Michael Bustamante said the governor is leaning toward approval.

* In a final flurry of activity, the Senate sent to Davis two major bills, SB 171 and SB 527, by Sens. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier) and Jackie Speier (D-Daly City), that would create experimental projects in Los Angeles and San Francisco to offer bare-bones car insurance coverage to low-income motorists with good driving records.

Under the four year program, designed to reduce the number of uninsured motorists on the road, the minimum policies would cost $450 a year in Los Angeles and $410 in San Francisco. A 25% surcharge would be levied against male drivers ages 19 to 24, a high risk accident group.

The proposed “lifeline” policy would provide liability coverage of $10,000 for bodily injury or death per person, up to a cumulative limit of $20,000 for multiple victims, and $3,000 for liability for damage to property.

* The Senate sent to Davis on a 24-10 vote a bill, SB 80, by Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) that would establish a pair of state commissions to try to understand the causes of hate violence in California and seek ways to prevent it, including enacting new laws. The two panels, called the California Commission on Combating Hate Groups and the attorney general’s Commission on Hate Crime Prevention, would report their findings and recommendations to the Legislature and governor by Jan. 1.

* Senators gave a unanimous final OK to a measure, SB 78, by Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City) that would require the Highway Patrol and police in major counties, including Los Angeles County, to gather data on the race and ethnicity of drivers pulled over for traffic stops. Supporters of the bill contend that police routinely make traffic stops of minority drivers in disproportion to their numbers in the general population, an alleged practice known as “driving while black.”

* The Senate gave final approval to a $2.4-million bill to finance a comprehensive investigation by Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer into the pricing practices of gasoline companies. Lockyer has said he must hire a battery of lawyers and other experts to find out if antitrust or other laws were broken this year during a series of “precipitous” price increases that pushed the cost of gasoline over $2 a gallon in some areas. The bill, SB 1131, by Senate President Pro Tem John L. Burton (D-San Francisco) went to the governor on a 27-1 vote.

* The Senate passed a bill stripping California’s district attorneys of their job of collecting overdue child support. Approved by the Assembly on Thursday, the bill would create a state department of child support and move the responsibility for collections to new county departments responsible to local boards of supervisors.

* The Assembly approved a bill (AB 406) that would require a study before any new area code or overlay is implemented. The bill, approved Thursday by the Senate, would require phone companies to prove their claims that the unpopular measures are needed. The measure puts on hold an overlay or split proposed for the 818 area code, but a provision in the bill blocking the 310 overlay on the Westside and South Bay was removed.

* A bill to allow Californians to register their bikes online passed the Senate 32-7 and went to the governor. SB 1206 would make information available to police for recovery of stolen bikes and apprehension of thieves. The bill by Sen. Don Perata (D-Alameda) was sponsored by Centric Media Inc., which wants to create a electronic registration system in California.

* A last-minute effort to get California taxpayers to foot the bill to defend prison guards charged with criminal misconduct was removed from a labor agreement reached between the state’s correctional officers and the Davis administration, a spokesman for Davis confirmed. The labor contract, ratified by the Legislature on Friday, would have set up a $4-million legal defense fund for the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., but that provision was removed after several lawmakers questioned the provision as precedent-setting.

The new contract gives officers a 4% pay increase retroactive to July 1 and another 4% salary boost next September.

* Voting 70-4, the Assembly gave final passage to a measure, AB 848, designed to make it easier for movie and TV production companies to secure permits to film at coastal locations. The bill, by Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), was seen as a way to avoid costly delays in obtaining permits from the Coastal Commission.

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Times staff writers Mark Gladstone, Carl Ingram and Amy Pyle contributed to this story.