Key Health Care Bill Dies in Capitol Chaos

One of the year’s most significant bills, a measure to use $128 million from the state’s tobacco settlement to expand a health care program for 600,000 poor working parents, died at the stroke of midnight Thursday amid a computer crash and the annual last-minute chaos of the Legislature’s closing session.

The surprise failure of the bill by Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier), which would have funded an expansion of the Healthy Families program, was one of many actions that triggered head-scratching and finger-pointing Friday as lawmakers began deconstructing the events of the night before.

On the final night of the eight-month legislative session, multimillion-dollar bills were rushed through with little explanation. Countless proposals, including a measure to overhaul the payday loan industry, were lost in the chaos. A two-year moratorium on timber clear-cutting and many other controversial measures quietly died.

Dozens of measures survived, including a bill by Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) to collect data on hate crimes at schools and one by Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar) to gather information on the race of children suspended from school.

Some late measures approved by fatigued lawmakers--who had spent much of the previous two weeks loquaciously honoring one another--now await Gov. Gray Davis’ signature.

“Fifteen to 20 hours of backslapping: It’s just come home to roost,” said Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge).

“I was really aghast,” said Assemblywoman Audie Bock of Piedmont, the Legislature’s lone independent. “Nobody there could claim today that they read every bill. Nobody.”

One last-minute measure, pushed through by Los Angeles Democrats and crafted on the final day of the session, would help finance 680 hospital beds in Los Angeles County. It was first voted on only minutes before the midnight deadline for approval of most bills.

Some Republicans complained that it did not pass the lower house until just after midnight, which could make it illegal. The Legislature’s own computer system recorded its passage at 12:01 a.m. Friday.

“This is now a lawless Legislature!” shouted McClintock.

Other last-minute bills included one enabling an Indian tribe in rural El Dorado County to build its own offramp so travelers on U.S. 50 could have access to a proposed $100-million casino. The bill, AB 1066, was carried by Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar).

More than 40 bills turned into pumpkins. One such measure, SB 540 by Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana), would have altered the way fees have been cut for Californians registering their vehicles. Stalled in the Senate, it would have eliminated a budget provision that requires the state to collect the full fee next year and then issue rebate checks, and would have replaced that process with a simple reduction of fees.

Taxpayer groups were outraged earlier this year after learning that car owners would have to pay the fee, then receive a refund that one Republican critic said might contain a “political love note” from Democrat Davis.

Davis said he had no plans for such a message. He defended the refunds, which will cost an estimated $44 million to process and mail, saying people realize they have received tax cuts only if they have checks in their hands.

Controller Kathleen Connell, who sends out the checks, will have to purchase new computers and other equipment to handle the gargantuan task. “I would have supported just reducing the vehicle license fee and not have to issue rebate checks,” Connell said through a spokesman.

Environmentalists vowed to come back next year after failing to win legislation by Assemblyman Fred Keeley (D-Boulder Creek) that called for a moratorium on clear-cutting of private timberlands. The bill, AB 717, stalled in a Senate committee.

Sierra Pacific Industries, the state’s largest private landowner, has accelerated clear-cutting on its 1.5 million acres of Northern California forest as a way to convert poor-growing, previously logged forests to more productive stands. The practice worries environmentalists and residents of neighboring communities, who blame it for increased erosion and destruction of wildlife habitat.

Environmentalists are pondering a ballot measure to achieve their goals.

After being revived this week, legislation to clamp down on the burgeoning payday loan industry died for the third time this year.

Payday lenders, legalized in California just a few years ago, provide advance money in primarily low-income communities in exchange for a cut of a person’s paycheck, charging rates that critics have called usurious.

The reconstituted bill, by Sen. Don Perata (D-Alameda), was never brought to a vote in the Assembly. It had been watered down in a committee earlier, angering consumer advocates who say they will resume the fight next year.

“This problem is not going away, and neither are we,” said Shelley Curran of Consumers Union.

The biggest failure was the Healthy Families funding, which had been widely expected to clear the Senate after passing the Assembly.

It was the heart of a three-piece package to extend the state-federal program to working poor parents. It now covers only children. The two companion measures were passed.

Escutia blamed her proposal’s failure on the Senate’s recently tuned-up computer system, which had difficulty processing the extraordinary workload of the final day. It slowed drastically and then crashed.

Instead of the traditional paper bills, the system provides electronic versions of legislation and records votes. Senators have become dependent on the new technology.

The Escutia measure simply vanished from the computer after it arrived in the house for a final vote. As the midnight deadline loomed, Escutia tried twice to take the bill up for approval, only to be told it was not there.

The liberal lawmaker was so desperate for help that she turned to opposition Republicans, whose independent system was outperforming the Senate’s.

“It was nowhere to be found,” Escutia said.

Dejected and angry, Escutia slumped at her desk in defeat Friday night. But minutes later, determined to make something of the night’s final moments, she lashed together a longshot plan to resuscitate an unrelated bill--a $42-million proposal to boost child care. The governor had said he would support it.

Escutia had to send SB 1703 to the Assembly, tack on a clause to make it take effect immediately and rush it back to the Senate for final passage. Such so-called urgency bills are exempt from the midnight deadline.

Escutia bolted out of the Senate chamber on a dead run, burst through packs of lobbyists filling the corridors and rushed into the Assembly.

With help from the Legislature’s Women’s Caucus, which interrupted the lower house’s proceedings with chants of “Child care! Child care! Child care!” her bill was approved in minutes.

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Times staff writer Julie Tamaki contributed to this story.

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SCHOOL DISTRICT MONITOR

Sen. Richard Polanco’s bid to establish state oversight of L.A. schools failed. B1

* SECESSION DRIVE FUNDS

A measure could lead to disclosure of donors to secession groups like Valley VOTE. B1