Panel Urges $1.1-Million Plan to Upgrade Security at Capitol

A legislative committee Monday proposed spending $1.1 million on metal detectors and X-ray equipment as a down payment on a long-range project to make the Capitol and its occupants safer from potential terrorists.

But the action immediately ran into the opposition of Senate Leader John L. Burton (D-San Francisco), who criticized metal detectors to screen visitors as a step the Senate was unwilling to take without further study.

In the nation’s post-Sept. 11 campaign to create greater security against terrorism, Burton said, the Legislature must be careful to protect the Capitol but not to overreact.

“We take Capitol security very seriously. But the Senate is not going to have this place look like the embassy in Beirut,” he said shortly after the Assembly-Senate Rules Committee adjourned an extraordinary meeting on security behind closed doors.

Burton, a committee member who did not attend the 3 1/2-hour session, said he understood that the meeting was supposed to be a “kind of show and tell” where no substantive actions would be taken, especially on the metal detectors.

“It’s a matter of figuring out how they’ll work. We don’t want to have schoolchildren standing in the rain waiting to get into the building,” Burton said.

Leading the committee’s list of security experts was Highway Patrol Commissioner D.O. “Spike” Helmick, who for years has been recommending tougher protection measures at the Capitol. Many have been accepted and many have not.

At the meeting’s conclusion, Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza (D-Merced), the committee chairman, told reporters it authorized $700,000 for metal detectors to scan people entering the 127-year-old building and $400,000 for X-ray equipment to examine mail delivered to the Capitol, including to Gov. Gray Davis.

Helmick recommended that the metal detectors--similar to those used at courts, city halls and airports--be set up at each of the six public entrances to the building. It was uncertain when they would be installed.

The committee also endorsed Helmick’s recommendation, first proposed in 1996, to abandon deliveries directly to a mail room in the Capitol basement.

Instead, he urged that all Capitol mail be intercepted at a separate site and thoroughly inspected, including the use of X-ray machines.

In previous recommendations, Helmick listed the off-site inspection as a very high priority because the Capitol basement was considered especially vulnerable to penetration by intruders.

However, the mail switch never won the support of the Legislature or governors.

The legislative committee Monday endorsed the off-site inspection plan, including the purchase of X-ray equipment.

However, the committee’s approval of the safety steps appeared to be clouded because the 22-person panel of Assembly members and senators lacked a quorum to transact business.

It takes a majority of each house’s 11-member delegation for the joint committee to act. Seven Assembly members attended, but only two from the Senate delegation.

Approval of the funds occurred in closed session without a quorum, Cardoza announced later. He said the absent senators would be “polled” individually later for their votes, an odd procedure that mystified some audience members.

In response to questions, Cardoza insisted such a process had been used over the years by “custom and tradition.” The Legislature’s rules for the committee contain no such procedure, but Senate Secretary Gregory Schmidt concurred that occasionally years ago absentees had been polled after the fact to get their views.

Cardoza told reporters that the failure of the senators to provide a quorum made the committee’s work more difficult.

“I take Capitol security very seriously. I would suggest that the Senate do it as well,” he said.

Angered, Burton said later that Senate members “take security very seriously,” but voiced doubt that enhanced security would stop a determined terrorist.

“Short of putting antiaircraft guns on the office building across the street, I don’t know what we are going to do,” he said.