From political reform to power grab

TWO LONG-SOUGHT political reforms -- extending term limits and changing the method of redistricting -- that seemed achievable in today’s more cooperative Sacramento are being strangled by the kind of partisan politics that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants California to move beyond.

For more than two years, redistricting reform has involved a two-step minuet. Lawmakers would give up their power to draw legislative and congressional lines if they could revise the term-limits law to stay in the state Senate or Assembly a bit longer. Assembly members are termed out after six years; senators can serve eight years.

But they failed to put a measure on the 2006 ballot that would have extended legislative terms to a maximum of 12 years in either chamber. As a result, both Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) will have to leave office next year.

What to do? Call a special election to be held in February 2008, ostensibly so California can have an early presidential primary, and place the term-limits measure on that ballot. Because the initiative would take effect immediately if it passed, Nunez and Perata could file for extended terms in March, which is the deadline to compete in the regular June primary. They would certainly be renominated in their safe districts and go on to election in November.

The rollout of the initiative could not have been clumsier. Neither Nunez nor Perata are official sponsors of the term-limits measure, and in its first version, the author, Democratic attorney Roberta Johansen, forgot to provide additional legislative years for Perata. Because Perata will have served 10 years in the Senate by the time of the 2008 election, the proposed 12-year limit had to be rewritten to give him 14 years in the body.

Another problem is that some other termed-out senators already have served their 12 years. The measure includes a special exception that would allow them to stay in office as long as 18, 20 and, in one case, 26 years.

What began as a sound public policy idea -- shortening term limits from a maximum of 14 in two houses to 12 in a single chamber -- has become a Cinderella farce, with legislators scheming to save themselves before the stroke of midnight. The public rejected a similar term-limits extension in 2002, so the proposed measure seems even less likely to pass the political smell test.

That brings us to redistricting reform. Schwarzenegger, whose support is considered crucial to voter approval of new term limits, has said he’ll back them only if the Legislature puts redistricting reform on the same ballot. But Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the new Democratic speaker of the House, said last week that any reform should exclude congressional districts. She thinks that taking the power to draw political lines away from legislators and giving it to an independent commission of citizens, as some reformers want, might risk her party’s tenuous majority in the House.

“The best way to assure passage [of redistricting reform] is not to have a $10-million campaign against it,” Nunez said last week in response. “And Congress will wage a $10-million campaign against it.”

The Assembly speaker is right. Five times since 1982, reformers and Republicans have put redistricting reform on the ballot, and five times congressional Democrats have organized expensive and successful campaigns to defeat the measures.

Nunez said he would probably leave congressional districts out of any reform legislation he sponsored, and Perata would go along with him. But Schwarzenegger would look foolish backing a plan that left out the highly gerrymandered congressional districts.

Some reform groups -- People’s Advocate, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters -- say they may push their own redistricting initiative, including congressional districts, and aim for the likely February ballot. (The presidential primary bill is in the Assembly, having passed the Senate.) An attorney working closely with the watchdog groups submitted a proposed Citizens Fair Districts Act to the state attorney general for title and summary last week. But these groups cannot attract the $10 million needed to overcome opposition from congressional Democrats.

The missing person in these machinations is Schwarzenegger. The biggest political surprise in 2007 has been the governor’s lack of action. Other than a news conference with watchdog groups, at which he embraced a redistricting reform that included a citizens commission and congressional districts, he has not been involved in crafting any of the measures on term limits or redistricting.

That spells potential disaster for reform. In 2005, Schwarzenegger adopted a reform agenda composed of ballot measures written by outside groups -- and it went down to overwhelming defeat. He would risk similar defeat in 2008, because other players with their own political agendas are driving the process.

The push to reform term limits and redistricting is not a fiasco yet -- but it’s getting close to one. If term-limits extension becomes little more than an incumbent power grab, and redistricting reform a political fig leaf, voters will probably say, why bother?