Bills Propose Penalty Box for Rowdy Sports Fans

Sacramento smackdown!

The Assembly approved Saratoga Democrat Rebecca Cohn’s bill to levy fines of up to $250 on anyone throwing objects on the court or the playing field during a professional sports event. (This would probably not apply to the tennis players who toss their cookies on the court now, nor to college basketball coach Bobby Knight’s throwing a chair.)

The Assembly also thumbs-upped a measure by Montebello Democrat Ronald Calderon, allowing a maximum six-month jail sentence and a $2,000 fine for striking a fan or an athlete during a sports event, whether pro or amateur.

Coaches, refs and umps are evidently on their own.

The Senate has yet to make its call.

Green Party Wants a Financial Accounting

The state’s Green Party was looking a little red over a contretemps about how to account for missing party funds.

It urged -- not ordered, mind you, but urged -- Greenster Mike Feinstein to “temporarily withdraw” from Green Party work.

At least until he makes public what became of a $10,000 check that was intended for the L.A. County Green Party but “apparently deposited into a credit union account he controlled,” said a party news release quoted by the Santa Monica Daily Press.

That paper has been following the matter closely, inasmuch as Feinstein, a fixture on the progressive political landscape, is also a Santa Monica City Council member.

The money went for rent and supplies at a Green Party office, but the state party contended it never OKd such an office space, and Feinstein has passed on all invitations to turn over the banking records on how the money was handled.

Feinstein just lost a big one to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected his city measure barring banks from ATM “double-dipping” -- charging customers for using automated teller machines at banks where they do not hold accounts.

An Idea for Boosting City Election Turnout

The cure for low voter turnout? Throw the rascals in longer.

VICA, the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. in the San Fernando Valley, is on record with its board of directors as tsk-tsking at the 9% turnout in last month’s L.A. city elections, and suggesting that the problem be remedied by holding city elections at the same time as federal congressional elections, in even-numbered years instead of the present odd-numbered years.

That, VICA noted, would require these remedies in the city charter:

* Extending incumbent elected officials’ terms by 18 months.

* Exempting these extensions from counting toward term limits.

* Changing the inauguration date for elected city officials from July 1 to Jan. 1 after their election.

Such a rejiggering of the ballot schedule could save at least a million bucks per election, VICA believes, and lift voter interest.

Draft Gore Group Is Up and Running

Not quite “none of the above,” but with two recent polls showing that non-candidate Al Gore would beat the present field of Democrats running for the White House, an Oakland-based committee wants Big Al back in the big time.

The Draft Gore 2004 Committee cited a nationwide poll by CNN/Time, and a New Hampshire poll by American Research Group giving Gore theoretical margins of 7% to 33% over the declared field.

The Draft Gore group wants to get Gore’s name on state ballots where it can, and run him as a write-in where it can’t.

Only Gore could “realistically win” in 2004, the group contends, citing the number that riles Republicans: Gore’s half-million-vote margin of victory in the nation’s popular vote in 2000.

Gore announced in December that he wouldn’t seek a rematch, to which President Bush’s political strategist Karl Rove declared with characteristically low pH acid, “I thought it would be a fool’s errand,” but Gore has “probably figured it out.”

Shawn Steel Still Striking Sparks

Shawn Steel was no shrinking violet when he headed up the state Republican Party.

He was censured by his own party when he threatened to recall any legislator supporting a tax hike. He duked it out with George W. Bush’s California point man.

After the Democrats swept state office, Steel deplored single-party rule as inviting “tyranny and corruption,” only to be reminded that his own party controls the White House and both houses of Congress.

Now that he’s an emeritus, he’s still striking sparks with comments about the nature of Islam, and, last week, about wishy-washy partisans and “confused apolitical moderates who are embarrassed at cocktail parties when the CEO’s third wife says she’s in favor of abortion.”

Steel, who’s gotten used to clarifying himself after the fact, said his remark was meant for wealthy hangers-on of both parties who don’t share a candidate’s or a party’s core values, but show up at expensive political “dos” anyway for the bragging rights and grip-and-grin political celeb photos.

Steel, whose tumultuous tenure ended in February, now represents chiropractors.

He told students at UC Davis last week, “I’m happy to be a free man.”

Points Taken

* Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who supposedly has higher-office aspirations of his own, has endorsed Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman for president, and for that he gets the job of California state chairman for “Joe 2004.”

* Declaring that he’s running for the Orange County Board of Supervisors next year, former Laguna Niguel City Council member Eddie Rose calls himself “a voice -- not an echo,” tweaking the title of the book “A Choice Not an Echo,” which promoted Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential candidacy and, not incidentally, the talking-head career of its author, Phyllis Schlafly.

* Drum roll please: the new name for the reincarnated “George” magazine founded by John F. Kennedy Jr. and now to be headquartered in Los Angeles: the New Frontier, the name JFK applied to the unified field of his administration’s goals. Runner up: the National Track, which would certainly have drawn subscriptions from readers expecting Triple Crown horseracing scoops.

* That fund-raising drive co-founded by Redlands French teacher Jane Roberts to replace the $34 million the Bush administration cut from the United Nations’ population fund has reached $1,277,045, collected mostly a dollar at a time from Americans. The administration pulled funding for the family planning program when it said that the fund was indirectly supporting Chinese agencies promoting coerced abortion. (A State Department fact-finding mission concluded the contrary.)

You Can Quote Me

“That’s a long time to go without registering your car.”

CHP Lt. Jerry Barker, after Kern County D.A. Ed Jagels was stopped for speeding in a silver Porsche whose registration was 3 years old. CHP stats show that 84% of Bakersfield-area traffic pull-overs get tickets, but the CHP gave Jagels only a warning. Nonetheless, Jagels said he found the incident “thoroughly humiliating.”

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Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt .morrison@latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Jean O. Pasco and Steven Herbert.