Legislative ‘Pork’ OKd in Boom Leaves Bad Taste in Lean Times

Ask lawmakers whether their votes are for sale, and the answer is: absolutely not. But come budget time, they can be flexible on that point.

Consider Maurice Johannessen, a legislator from far Northern California until his Senate term ended two years ago. Johannessen was one of a handful of Republicans who regularly bolted from his party to help Democrats get state budgets passed. That’s how he became a master at delivering to folks back home what he called “district augmentations” and others describe as Projects of Regional Concern -- PORC for short.

In return for his budget vote, here’s what Johannessen got over the years: $25 million for a Sacramento River parkway known as Turtle Bay in his hometown of Redding, including $10 million for the landmark Sundial Bridge designed by renowned architect Santiago Calatrava.

There was more, including a $10-million sports field, a $12-million library and $750,000 to remodel an old playhouse. Republicans ostracized Johannessen in his final years in Sacramento. Unpleasant though that was, he has no regrets.

“Politics is not a team sport,” Johannessen said. “I came in with a purpose: to get projects done. If you get elected for the purpose of doing what the party wants you to do, then stay home.”

Johannessen is not unique. Most elected officials strive to be known as politicians who can deliver public swimming pools, parks and museums for their districts. It gains them votes.

“There is an electoral incentive,” said political scientist Scott A. Frisch of Cal State Channel Islands in Camarillo. “Politicians look for things that are tangible. They want to put on a hardhat, use the oversize scissors and cut the ribbon.”

But procuring the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on “pork barrel” projects when the state was flush may now haunt lawmakers -- and taxpayers.

An unpublished analysis by the state Senate shows that legislative grants, which totaled $22 million in the 1994-95 fiscal year, peaked at $393 million in 1999 as the stock market boom caused state tax revenue to balloon. That’s a fraction of California’s annual budget, which hovers at $100 billion.

But the state faces an $8-billion shortfall next year, budget experts say. Some of them trace California’s current fiscal problems to budgets passed five and six years ago, when then-Gov. Gray Davis and lawmakers approved ever more costly spending plans as long as there was money for their pet projects.

Moreover, dozens of interviews and a Times review of state files on more than 100 grants show that millions went to entities with political connections. Much of the money was handed out not on merit or need, but in connection with some political act -- such as a budget vote -- or because an organization had a relationship with a lawmaker.

Allocations were made in private, without debate or public input, and with no provisions for oversight.

“It usually is done to buy a vote,” said Assemblyman Ray Haynes (R-Murrieta), “and it increases spending a lot, and that is its greatest evil.”

As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger prepares to unveil his next budget, state auditors are picking through grants awarded to scores of lawmakers’ favored groups during the fat years from 1999 to 2001.

The review began last summer when it became public that one such group -- the nonprofit San Francisco Neighbors Resource Center -- had failed to spend its $492,500 grant to build a community center as promised. Authorities allege that $125,000 was diverted to the campaign coffers of Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, who as an assemblyman arranged for the funding. An investigation is underway.

Most politicians crow about what they deliver. Haynes boasts of never having sought money for pet projects.

Near Hemet, a Riverside County town of fewer than 70,000 people in his district, state taxpayers are spending $30 million to build the Western Center for Archeology and Paleontology. That includes general tax money and funds from bond measures written by legislators and approved by voters.

The museum, to open next year, will house bones of bison, mammoths and other prehistoric beasts discovered when the Metropolitan Water District excavated an area that now is Diamond Valley Lake.

But it was not Haynes who sought the money. The museum was the pet project of Republican David Kelley, a former state senator and assemblyman who is a museum board member. While in office, Kelley secured funding for what budget writers called the “Bones Museum” by voting to pass budgets written mostly by the Legislature’s dominant Democrats.

“Pork is never allocated on the basis of need,” Haynes said. “It is always allocated on the basis of politics, and usually to buy a vote.”

In an interview, Kelley predicted that the museum “will be huge, absolutely huge.” The finest specimens rival those at the La Brea Tar Pits, he said.

“There’s a lot of things I got money for,” Kelley said, referring to funds he helped obtain for roads, the Western Center and other things. “That is what it’s all about in terms of representing your district.”

In most cases, groups that accepted lawmakers’ grants completed their work. But the civil servants who were required to deliver the checks had no authority to investigate the groups’ financial stability, and little power to track how the money was spent. Most of the grants were funneled through the state Department of Parks and Recreation, though much of the money went to projects unrelated to parks.

“In retrospect, there was not adequate oversight by the Legislature on some of these projects,” said Assemblyman Dario Frommer (D-Los Feliz). “They were put into the budget without scrutiny about which projects would come to fruition, or whether the groups were stable.”

In some instances, legislators served on boards of directors of the nonprofit corporations for which they obtained money. In others, patrons of groups receiving the grants were significant campaign donors.

“I don’t think that hurts,” said Sen. Gil Cedillo, a Democrat who secured millions for his downtown Los Angeles district. The money helped build a community center in Little Tokyo, rehabilitate a once-abandoned Jewish synagogue in Boyle Heights, create a museum in Chinatown, and assist Father Gregory Boyle’s antigang efforts.

“We were very close to the governor and the speaker,” Cedillo said, referring to Davis and Assembly Speakers Antonio Villaraigosa and Bob Hertzberg, both of whom are Los Angeles Democrats. “It was a good moment for us.”

Usually, lawmakers seeking grants gave the Davis administration minimal information: the name of the group to get the money, the amount sought and little, if anything, more.

Though the sums were relatively small parts of the budget, the governor and his aides spent considerable time going over lists, top Davis administration officials said. They focused on which legislator had made a given request and whether a potential recipient group represented a constituency to be courted.

In 1999, his first year in office, Davis gave out money based in part on how legislators voted on four bills he sponsored that were crucial to his stated goal of improving public schools. At least 45 legislators who voted for all four bills received all of their requests, a review of the 1999 grants shows.

More than 60 rank-and-file legislators who voted for all four Davis-sponsored education bills that year got $117 million in pet projects. (Republican and Democratic legislative leaders could make their own deals.) They were denied $19 million.

By contrast, Davis vetoed $30.6 million in requests by lawmakers who abstained or voted against one or more of the education bills. He approved $24.5 million of their requests.

Legislative leaders and lawmakers who sit on the Senate and Assembly budget committees invariably take large slabs from the pork barrel. In 1999, projects sought by then-Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) received $27 million, records show. Then-Budget Committee Chairman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista) got $13 million for his projects.

Most legislators settled for smaller pieces: $10,000 for soccer uniforms in Garden Grove, $49,000 to spruce up an American Legion hall in East Los Angeles, $250,000 to plant a botanical garden in Clovis, near Fresno, and $1.4 million to help build a Boys & Girls Club in Hayward, in the Bay Area. In each case, the governor and legislative leaders decided the amounts behind closed doors.

Many of the projects improved neighborhoods. Next to the First Church of the Nazarene near downtown Los Angeles, a small nonprofit group used $246,000 from the state and $250,000 from the city to build a playground.

Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles) was the park’s champion. Why was it funded over other projects she requested?

“I have no idea,” Goldberg said.

She knows, however, that her district did well when Richard Polanco, a Democrat whose Senate district overlapped Goldberg’s turf, was in office. Polanco was part of the leadership.

“If you have juice, you got stuff,” she said. “If you don’t have juice, you don’t get stuff.”

Among the grants unrelated to parks was $197,000 awarded to Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services in West Los Angeles, which has a $34-million annual budget. The grant helped pay for a $5-million building to house two dozen mentally ill children. Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City), who secured the grant, sits on the agency’s board of directors.

“Any nonprofit is going to call in any election officials they know and ask them to speak well of it. It has always been a strategy of nonprofits,” said Jeffrey Catania, vice president of Vista Del Mar’s development.

Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) in 2000 obtained a $394,000 grant to expand the Asian Youth Center, a social services provider in her San Gabriel-area district. Assemblywoman Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), elected in May 2001, took on the job of pushing the parks department to free up the money.

Chu helped found the organization in 1989, and is an honorary board member. Chu said the grant process is “survival of the fittest,” adding, “Those who make the most noise succeed.”

Most of the money that is the focus of state audits came from general taxes. But by far the bulk of the funds spent in recent years on parks and museums came from $4.6 billion in park bonds approved by voters from March 2000 to November 2002.

The measures specified many of the projects to be funded. Other money was given on a competitive basis. But some of it was left to politics.

In the final days before the November 2002 election, Davis doled out nearly $80 million. He gave $500,000 for an expansion of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, and $1 million to create a children’s garden at Copia, a museum founded by vintner Robert Mondavi in Napa that is devoted to fine food, wine and culture in Napa.

Several recipients were among Davis’ campaign donors. A member of the board of one recipient project, the proposed Immigration Museum for New Americans in San Diego, donated $25,000 to Davis. Two weeks later, the governor gave $2.4 million toward the museum’s construction.

The founder of the Long Beach museum, Robert Gumbiner, donated $100,000 for Davis’ fight against the recall last year.

Even in lean years, at least a few pork projects get funded.

This month, a board established by lawmakers passed out $35 million in Proposition 40 bond money to cultural projects.

The grants were based on competition, but some of the biggest went to legislators’ pet projects. In addition, members of the board that distributed the money added, and funded, projects that interested them.

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Where the Money Went

Without public debate and requiring no competitive application process, California lawmakers spent hundreds of millions of dollars on pet projects from 1999 to 2002. Some of the 20 being reviewed by Controller Steve Westly’s auditors include:

* Western Center Community Foundation in Riverside County: $2.2 million pushed in 2000-01 by former Assemblyman and Sen. David Kelley (R-Hemet) to help build an archeological museum in Hemet.

* Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles: $98,500 promoted in 2000-01 by Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) to help buy land for and build a bakery to employ youths.

* American Legion Post 804 in Los Angeles: $49,250 advocated in 2001-02 by Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) to help purchase and refurbish a meeting hall.

* Breed Street Shul Project in Los Angeles: $492,500 sought in 2001-02 by Cedillo to help restore a synagogue in Boyle Heights.

* Eagle Rock community in Los Angeles: $295,500 promoted in 2000-01 by Sen. Jack Scott (D-Altadena) for private businesses to spruce up a commercial strip.

Sources: California Department of Parks and Recreation, state controller’s office. Graphics reporting by Dan Morain

Los Angeles Times