Assembly Speaker Opens Coachella Office

Assembly Speaker Herb J. Wesson Jr. opened an office last month in Coachella -- where Democrats narrowly lost an Assembly seat to Republicans in 2002 -- and hired the losing candidate to run it.

Joey Acuna, who fell about 2,500 votes short of representing Imperial County and part of Riverside County, was put on the Assembly payroll March 17 at $40,000 a year. He works for the Speaker’s Office of Member Services, which promotes the election and reelection of Democrats in the Assembly.

Acuna’s job is to encourage eligible people to sign up for the state’s CalGrant program, which offers college funding, and the Healthy Families program, which gives health insurance to the children of the working poor, said Wesson’s spokeswoman, Patricia Soto.

Reached Monday in Coachella, a community of 23,000 southeast of Palm Springs, Acuna declined to describe how he goes about his work. He referred questions to his boss, Lynn Montgomery, the director of the Speaker’s Office of Member Services. She did not return repeated phone calls.

For many years, Assembly speakers have kept offices in key population centers around the state, in addition to ones in Sacramento and their own districts. Wesson’s predecessor, San Fernando Valley Democrat Bob Hertzberg, had offices in Fresno, San Diego, Oakland and Los Angeles.

Wesson has offices in all but Oakland. The Coachella office rents for $214 a month.

Soto said that the opening of a new office is not related to its being in the 80th District, which Democrats lost in a tight November race. Acuna, a former construction supervisor and school board member, lost to Republican Bonnie Garcia by 48.2% to 51.8%.

Wesson “believes there are constituents out there whose needs and interests need to be served,” Soto said.

Democrats dominate the 80-member Assembly, with 48 seats. But Republicans gained two seats last fall.

Several months ago, Wesson, a Democrat from Culver City, vowed to scrutinize every state program for ways to save money and help balance a state budget that is estimated to be short by $35 billion over the next 15 months.

The Assembly is trimming its own operating budget of $118 million next year by $8 million, mostly by not filling empty jobs, cutting back on printing costs, limiting travel and making lawmakers pay for their own late-night and other working meals, which alone saves $98,000, officials said.

“Even with those cutbacks,” Soto said, “the speaker feels an office in Coachella is a priority.”

Some argue that Wesson’s priorities are all wrong.

“All citizens in California should be outraged that, during the worst fiscal crisis in the history of California, we have the speaker’s office expanding government with new Assembly offices in areas that are competently represented,” said Shirley Horton, (R-Chula Vista). Her victory by 1,579 votes over Democrat Vince Hall gained Republicans their other new seat in last fall’s election.

Garcia, Acuna’s opponent, could not be reached for comment on his new job.

Those who work for the Assembly’s Democratic caucus, like Acuna, traditionally have been more involved in politics than policy.

Over the last decade, the payrolls of the Democratic and Republican caucuses have grown faster than the Legislature’s overall budget.

The Assembly Democratic caucus in 1989, for example, had a payroll of $1.7 million, according to Assembly records. As of February, the caucus payroll stood at $10.4 million and included 165 people.

Republicans have not dominated the Legislature in the last decade, except for a year and a half in 1995 and 1996. As the minority party, they depend on Democrats for their operating budgets. The Republican caucus payroll in the Assembly has grown from $1.6 million in 1989 to $5.5 million, covering 109 people, as of February.

Timothy Hodson, executive director of the Center for California Studies at Cal State Sacramento, said he has noticed an increase in the number of partisan staff versus policy staff, who are experts in such subjects as education, juvenile justice and natural resources.

“I think that’s a function of term limits and a function of the general political culture in the United States in the last 10 years,” Hodson said. “Who knows who threw the first stone, but I do think there is a real tendency of both parties to want to add staff who are the political shock troops.”