No Time for Apologies--This Is an Emergency

Gray Davis had summoned his entire Cabinet, along with Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, to an emergency meeting last Tuesday to launch the state’s new crisis budget: an employee hiring freeze and a $150-million budget cut.

The chronically tardy governor arrived 71 minutes late, with no explanation or apologies. He took a seat at the table--saying nothing to the Cabinet members, who sat there like dress extras--and turned his attention to a bank of television cameras to detail his budget-cutting orders. Reporters were then ushered out of the room, and the hourlong meeting began.

Davis sat next to Bustamante at the long table; word is that this was the first Cabinet meeting Bustamante was invited to since he and Davis fell out over the governor’s handling of the lawsuit over Proposition 187.

Political Campaign Out, Military Campaign In

For now, Tom Umberg won’t be out for votes--he’ll be out for the duration, somewhere on the home front. The Army Reserve colonel, who is running for state insurance commissioner, got called up recently to be sent out of state for “a short period of time,” according to his political director. That left his campaign--mostly fund-raisers at this point--in the hands of his wife, another Army Reserve colonel who could also get a call any day now.

Umberg was called up for domestic duty during the Persian Gulf War, and when he reproduced a postcard to his family in a campaign mailer, his GOP rival accused him of wrongly implying he was in the Mideast, not in the Mojave.

Several of Umberg’s campaigns have been interrupted by military service; it seems that when Umberg runs, the nation fights.

Cross Purposes and the Law

The two top lawyers in L.A., the district attorney and the city attorney, did some business a while back in the D.A.’s 18th-floor digs. City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo wanted to short-cut the bureaucratic red tape and swap one of his assistant city attorneys for Deputy D.A. Lea D’Agostino, who came in third in the primary and threw her support to Delgadillo. Delgadillo had her in mind for a job as a special assistant to him.

The district attorney, Steve Cooley, who took office last December, demurred, as lawyers say; any such arrangement would have to jump through all the requisite hoops with the county’s Board of Supervisors.

Then Delgadillo suggested that his staff of city attorneys be cross-designated. That is, they would be able to act just like district attorneys, including trying felonies. This is done once in a while, usually on a case-by-case basis, as “mutual aid” among agencies, when investigations lead across many jurisdictions and many kinds of crimes.

And that, Cooley said, is how it will continue to be done--as the need requires. Deputy D.A.s are made, not designated, the D.A. pointed out: They apply for jobs and get accepted.

So city attorneys won’t be prosecuting murderers any time soon.

Pete Wilson, on the Wing

Former Gov. Pete Wilson serves on a couple of federal boards, including intelligence and national defense policies, and it was returning from one of their meetings that this happened:

This was 10 days after the September terrorist attacks, when airlines were begging travelers to return to the skies. And Wilson, flying frugally on a government economy ticket on a United flight out of Washington, D.C., was trying to get some work done on a speech. When he found his row too crowded and noisy, he moved up a few rows to a quieter seat.

What he probably didn’t realize, said his spokeswoman, was that it was the back row of business class. The Washington Post reported that a flight attendant demanded, “Where did you come from?” When Wilson answered, she responded, “You can’t do that.” When Wilson asked “politely” why not, the Post said, she responded, “People pay more to fly business class.” Wilson asked how much more, and was told, “Quite a bit more. And you’re going to have to move back. . . .”

He did--the ex-Marine never seemed much like one for pulling rank--and when someone informed the flight attendant that that was the former governor of California she was talking to, she replied, “Well, he should know better, because that’s a theft of service.”

Wilson couldn’t comment himself, the spokeswoman said; he was off flying to a meeting.

Location, Location, Location--but Not Yours

Los Angeles is haggling over whether to split itself apart, and the Chief Hagglers won’t even agree on where to sit down and talk about it.

San Fernando Valley secessionists are not fond of City Hall--metaphorically or literally. Charles Brink of the Valley VOTE secession group recently called it “the most useless building in Los Angeles,” to thunderclaps of applause and guffaws of laughter.

That was at a hearing in Northridge. Northridge is in the Valley; City Hall is downtown. So when Hahn’s office suggested City Hall as the place to negotiate the terms of the ballot measure on secession--it has TV and sound facilities and big meeting rooms, all of which Valley tax money helped to pay for--secessionists wouldn’t hear of it.

The upshot of the dithering is that the agency supervising this municipal divorce proceeding canceled plans for City Hall and moved the meeting to the county’s Hall of Administration. That building is named for Kenneth Hahn--the father of the L.A. mayor who has pledged to all but tie himself to the railroad tracks to stop the secession train.

Quick Hits

* Rep. John Mica, the Florida Republican who heads the House aviation subcommittee, thinks an airport at Orange County’s former El Toro Marine base would be just dandy, and he’s saying so in 30-second cable TV spots all over Washington, home to all those agencies that will have a hand in the matter.

* One lunch, six speakers, for $15--all the Republican gubernatorial candidates: Bill Jones, Richard Riordan, Bill Simon and the trio of Orange County contenders--are to speak at Thursday’s Orange County Federation of Republican Women luncheon.

* Emmy Awards, take note: The season’s hottest video may be the CHP’s half-hour anthrax defense training film for state mail room employees, which TV news programs have aired to huge ratings, and which in fewer than a dozen days has tallied up 180,000 hits on the see-it-here Web site, https://chp.ca.gov

Word Perfect

“They don’t make the place look like it’s Beirut under siege.”

State Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, who agreed to placing a row of concrete planters as security around the Capitol instead of raising up a fence.

*

Columnist Patt Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Michael Finnegan and Jean O. Pasco.