Budget Shuffle Fills Out Gov.’s Staff

Ashley Snee’s official title is special assistant in the state’s Department of Managed Health Care, the agency that oversees HMOs. But that’s not where she spends her day. Her $94,500 job is in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s press shop.

Cynthia Bryant’s title is special assistant in the Department of Motor Vehicles, which pays her $111,000 salary. Her actual job is promoting the governor’s legislative agenda in the Capitol.

They are two of 17 gubernatorial aides earning a total of $1.3 million who in many cases are filling roles that have little to do with the agencies paying their salary.

It is a practice that obscures the true size and cost of government, according to budget experts. But it is also one that past governors have employed as a politically appealing alternative to asking the Legislature for a bigger staff.

That Schwarzenegger is doing it too illustrates how even a governor who says he is intent on forging a new political culture may find that, when it comes to running the government, old habits are tough to resist.

“It’s a shell game that every governor has played,” said state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), who ran against Schwarzenegger in the recall election. “It’s a sloppy, muddy process that shouldn’t happen, but it does.”

The current budget sets aside $6.1 million for the governor’s office, a figure that veterans of past administrations say is not enough, and Schwarzenegger asked for no increase in 2004-05.

The office is bumping up against the limit, aides said, with the budget strained by salaries, operational expenses and payouts to former Davis administration workers who were forced from office after the recall.

To keep the staff from being swamped, Schwarzenegger must continue dipping into other state departments under his control, according to his office.

The political appointees “in the bureaucracy essentially work for the governor. So you are borrowing within the executive branch,” said Rob Stutzman, communications director for Schwarzenegger.

All the same, he added, “this is a type of silliness in government that this governor is particularly interested in correcting.”

Stutzman said a performance review team that Schwarzenegger had created would look into consolidating office staff -- a move that “could very well have the effect of increasing the governor’s office budget. And that’s probably why previous governors haven’t gone back and done it.”

Budget experts, lawmakers and officials who worked for past governors contend that the personnel shuffle makes it difficult to determine who works where, what the governor is spending on his own office and what is being spent on other departments.

But some note that governors will borrow positions that are, for the time being, vacant, minimizing the disruption to the agencies.

Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla (D-Pittsburg), a member of the Legislature’s Bipartisan Group, said, however, that “if there aren’t adequate staff in the governor’s office, I’d much rather them come in and say we need more assistance because we’re not able to meet the requirements, than to pretend they can by pulling people in from other departments.”

In a round-table meeting with reporters in December, Schwarzenegger said that his aim was to make do with less.

“I’m having someone from the outside come in to analyze everything that we do here. Do we need to cut people here in the Horseshoe?” he said, referring to the governor’s suite of offices in the Capitol. “Whatever it is, I want to go out and find the waste also. Because it’s very important that while people out there are suffering and having to take the beating and the cuts, that we do our own version here and that we cut back and not live in luxury.”

But for now, the governor’s staff is drawing from a number of departments.

Priscilla Hernandez’s title is staff assistant to the state Department of Consumer Affairs, which fights unscrupulous pitchmen and promotes fire-retardant mattresses.

She actually works as an aide to Schwarzenegger, a job that in recent weeks found her passing the microphone to members of the audience during a public appearance by the governor in Irwindale.

A member of the governor’s legislative lobbying team, Dennis Albiani, who earns $94,500 a year, is nominally attached to the Air Resources Board, according to the governor’s office.

A press aide, Jennifer Scoggins, is formally attached to the Department of Developmental Services. Kathryn Hutchison is part of the governor’s Cabinet affairs team, though her $94,500 salary is drawn from the Department of Corrections budget.

The governor’s aides say that, given Schwarzenegger’s celebrity and the attention now being paid to state government, he is justified in assembling a staff equal to the public’s seemingly unrelenting appetite for information.

Schwarzenegger’s public appearances are often jammed. News conferences are frequently attended by foreign reporters. The level of interest is such that one aide is assigned to field questions from the foreign and entertainment media.

“In terms of the media requests, we’re dealing with, not just local, not just state, not just national, not just international, but also entertainment,” spokeswoman Margita Thompson said. “It’s a wonderful reflection of the fact that people are engaged and people are paying attention. That’s reflected in the amount of media calls we have, and we have to make sure we address that.”

More than his predecessors, Schwarzenegger is well-positioned to make a persuasive case for expanding the office budget, said Ken Khachigian, an advisor to former Govs. George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, both Republicans.

“This is something where the governor could make some points in the sense of saying, ‘Look, I came into office to open up the books. And governors for a long time have been playing this game of detailing people to the office. Just be candid about it. I need a lot of help and I need very capable, experienced help. And for the first time, I’m going to ask for this budget and put everybody on this payroll.’

“I think that would actually serve him well.”