Sheriff Takes End Run Around Board on Funding

Three strikes and you’re out, or third time’s a charm? Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca angled in 2002 for a half-cent rise in the county’s sales tax to fund the fight against terrorism. He tried again in October to put it on the ballot because the county’s financial circumstances were so straitened that “even if Houdini was alive today he could not get out of it.” Didn’t happen -- the county supervisors, who could put it on the ballot if they wished, didn’t wish.

So Baca’s taking a third run at it -- and an end run around the Board of Supervisors -- to collect the 200,000 signatures to put it on the ballot, which explains the “I Signed” poster bearing his image between that of multilingual, fur-coat-wearing rapper Won-G and businesswoman-actress-mother Alison Heruth Waterbury.

“I look at law enforcement like fathers and mothers in our neighborhood,” Won-G said. “Being a street artist and an artist that’s always in the community, I’ve seen it, I’ve felt the love that law officials have given me, the love that I have given them.”

Baca’s own sound bite: “The great thing about being sheriff of Los Angeles County is you can put your political neck on the line and not concern yourself with who’s gonna chop it off.”

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Cardenas Repays Kaiser for Circus Tickets

When Kaiser Permanente recently acknowledged to the Los Angeles Ethics Commission that some of its funds may have improperly benefited politicians, the company was mum to the public about just who those politicians were.

Now, L.A. City Councilman Tony Cardenas has been first to fess up: On Nov. 2, he got six tickets worth $517 to Cirque du Soleil from Kaiser manager Leland Wong -- evidently exceeding the state gift limit of $340.

Cardenas looked into this after The Times put the question to him; he wrote Kaiser a check for the balance, $177, last week. The check would have been in the mail sooner, he said, if Kaiser had told him what he needed to know when he needed it -- that is, the true value of the tickets.

Even though the city ethics law says elected officials can’t get gifts worth more than $100 in any year from any company “doing or seeking to do business with the city,” Cardenas says he thinks he’s now in compliance, but he’d pay whatever it takes to meet the rules.

The Kaiser matter prompted Wong to resign from the city commission overseeing the Department of Water and Power, as well as to leave his job as Kaiser’s director of government relations.

The HMO said its own investigation showed Wong might have improperly used Kaiser staffers to organize at least three fundraisers for politicians, and that he handed over $8,700 worth of tickets to cultural and sporting events, some of which busted city and state gift limits.

Wong has denied doing anything wrong, and 14 City Council members have denied that Wong hosted a fundraiser for them, or gave them gifts. The 15th -- Cardenas -- said Wong was on the host committee for one of his fundraisers, but that nobody had said Word One about Kaiser resources being improperly used.

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Burton Doesn’t Mince Words on Rich People

On paper, you might not be enthralled by a panel at the California Manufacturers and Technology Assn., but the pithy Big Jim Brulte, the imminently termed-out leader of state Senate Republicans, and his Democratic counterpart, the choleric, acerbic Sen. John Burton -- a sort of Howard Dean with a sense of humor -- strike sparks like steel on flint.

Brulte had just observed that “nothing is more mobile than rich people and their money,” to which the moderator asked Burton how California could create more millionaires and keep them here. And boy, did he answer:

“I think conceivably if we get rid of all taxes, except taxes on the poor, we’ll have a lot more millionaires in the state. It won’t do us any ... damned good, except when they buy three or four cars. They won’t be paying vehicle license fees on them, but maybe we can get them on the sales tax. And then of course we can compete with Malaysia and this cheap labor they have in China. Then we could reduce the minimum wage down to 35 cents an hour. And I think that would work. Of course, then somebody might want to start getting machine guns and stuff to stop any revolutionaries from moving into their neighborhood. And I think after it works for about six months everybody will be moving out of California. Not just because of [the] business climate.”

Amazing how such a shy, soft-spoken man got so far in politics.

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Water Cups Suddenly an Issue for State Workers

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t kidding when he talked about “Armageddon”-scale budget cuts.

Armageddon presumably will usher in the terminal phase of extreme global warming. Will Sacramento be ready? Not unless it brings its own cups.

A January thrift memo from the Assembly Rules Committee to all of its related offices dwelt on the topic of paper cups.

“Effectively immediately, DGS’s [Department of General Services] Building and Property Management branch will no longer provide disposable water cups for your water dispenser. To obtain cups, please tell the Culligan water delivery person during scheduled water deliveries that your office also wants cups.... Your office will be charged $3 per sleeve of 100 pleated 3.5-ounce cups. This charge will be added to the water delivery invoice and charged to your office budget.”

So drink up -- just use your own cup.

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Points Taken

* Reading Beltway tea leaves, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call speculates that Rob Reiner may be thinking about running for governor in 2006 -- this on the strength of his hiring of Jim Farrell. Farrell left his job at Planned Parenthood Federation of America to take up his portfolio as communications director for Reiner’s November ballot measure, the “Improving Classroom Education Act,” to raise commercial property taxes to pay for universal preschool and other classroom programs.

* Bill Christiansen, former executive director of the Orange County Republican Party, is the new executive director of the Arizona Republican Party.

* Saratoga Democratic Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohn is getting practically Schwarzeneggerian PR; the January issue of San Jose magazine lists 50 things the rest of us didn’t know about her, like her fondness for “Gilligan’s Island” reruns, and that Martin Sheen -- the president on “The West Wing” -- is the celebrity she can most identify with because “I also have to make very difficult decisions.”

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You Can Quote Me

“Old speakers never die. They just run for higher office!”

Former Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson’s crowd-pleasing but enigmatic exit line at the state’s Democratic Party convention.

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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 Times staff writers Evan Halper and Patrick McGreevy.