Term Limits Hinder Legislative Diligence

SACRAMENTO —  In the building where the biggest issues facing California are weighed, inexperience was evident, campaign money was ever-present and decisions important and petty emerged from the chaos that marked the close of the Legislature’s two-year term.

When all actions are tallied, the production of the session that ended Sunday shortly past midnight likely will match that of recent years. There were bills on vital issues ranging from school construction and renewable energy to water delivery, recycling and mass transit. But to Capitol veterans, the scene seemed haphazard, rushed, increasingly partisan and perhaps overly influenced by special interests.

“Everybody here is on a learning curve,” said Assemblyman Bill Leonard (R-San Bernardino), serving out his 24th and final year in the Legislature.

Four years ago, lawmakers elected with Gov. Gray Davis reveled in a $13-billion budget surplus. There was so much money that they were able to expand health care for poor people, give public school teachers big raises, provide college grants to all needy and deserving high school graduates, rebuild aging freeways and cut taxes.

As Davis and most of the Legislature run for reelection, lawmakers find themselves staggering, hit first by the energy crisis that dominated 2001, then by the constraints of a record budget shortfall this year of nearly $24 billion.

“Liberals are frustrated. Conservatives are angry. Everybody is cranky,” said outgoing Assemblyman Kevin Shelley (D-San Francisco).

In what many see as indicative of a new seat-of-the-pants Legislature, lawmakers repeatedly bypassed the spirit if not the letter of their internal rules. They convened perfunctory hearings on significant policy matters late at night and performed a procedure called “gut and amend,” in which legislators hijack one another’s bills, remove the original content and substitute new language, often dealing with entirely different subject matter.

Late-night end-of-session deals have always been a part of Sacramento. But the sheer number put together in the closing days this year is evidence, some say, that the traditional legislative process is simply too complex and laborious in a term-limited era.

Sometimes, the procedure was used to insert language that had been months in the works, as with SB 800, negotiated by Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). The bill forged a compromise between builders and trial lawyers to establish new guidelines governing lawsuits over construction defects. Steinberg hopes the measure, once signed by Gov. Gray Davis, will help spur construction of more affordable housing.

At other times, majority Democrats invoked the legislative process to jam bills past protesting Republicans, such as the Senate’s approval of a bill allowing the Davis administration to raise the so-called car tax by as much as $3.9 billion without a vote of the Legislature. That measure died as part of a budget compromise reached late Saturday night, two months after the constitutional deadline for having a spending plan in place.

“The problem with the gut-and-amend process,” said Sen. Steve Peace (D-El Cajon), “is there’s no public engagement between the houses in which the public can observe what the differences are.” Peace is leaving the Legislature after 20 years because of term limits.

The solution could be as simple as a basic civics lesson. Perhaps, Peace mused, lawmakers could buy placemats sold in the basement gift shop that detail “how a bill becomes a law.”

Of course, the real story of how a bill becomes a law is nuanced.

Take, for example, SB 1078. It began as a minor measure by Sen. Jim Battin (R-La Quinta) dealing with a few rural schools. It ended up being an effort by Sen. Byron Sher (D-Stanford) to require that private utilities obtain at least 20% of the electricity they sell from wind, solar, geothermal or other renewable energy sources.

The Assembly initially approved Sher’s version of the bill Tuesday night, then rescinded its action. Modesto-area lawmakers wanted to amend it to ensure that it would cover a trash-burning power plant in their hometown operated by Covanta Energy of New Jersey, even though garbage combustion does not typically fall within the definition of renewable energy. Once amended, the bill was sent on its way. Davis has said he will sign the measure.

Placemats sold in Capitol gift shops don’t discuss the influence of campaign donations. But legislators know that when candidates raise and spend $3 million or more for a job that pays $99,000 a year, campaign donations are vital.

“People got involved in politics because they care,” said Sen. Ross Johnson (R-Irvine), first elected in 1978. “But they immediately learn that caring isn’t enough. Caring doesn’t get [election] mailers out, or produce a survey of voters.”

August is the month when the fate of hundreds of bills is decided. It’s also prime fund-raising time, especially in an election year. Virtually every lawmaker seeking reelection--and some who have no election or are prevented by term limits from running again--held Capitol area fund-raisers, charging a minimum $1,000.

Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City) raised at least $114,000 in August. Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) raised at least $80,000. No legislator came close to matching the fund-raising prowess of Davis, who took in more than $3.5 million in the first 29 days of the month.

More than a few legislators, and many lobbyists, talk about diminished ethical standards.

“When I got here, it was distasteful,” said Assemblyman Rod Pacheco (R-Riverside), a former Riverside County deputy district attorney who is leaving after serving his maximum six years in the lower house. “Now it is fetid.”

Leonard tells of hearing newer members joke about how taking a particular position might alienate one political action committee or another. He tells of having to cut off discussion by clumsy interest group representatives who tie policy positions to campaign donations.

“People are new and lines get pushed more,” said Assemblyman Dean Florez (D-Shafter). “The boundaries seem to stretch.”

Florez presided over more than 100 hours of early summer hearings into the Davis administration’s failed $95-million computer software contract with Oracle Corp.--capped by a revelation that shortly after the deal was consummated, an Oracle lobbyist handed a $25,000 check to a Davis aide who worked on the matter.

The most significant piece of legislation to emerge from those hearings was a bill requiring that sales representatives of private vendors doing business with the state disclose details of their activities in public reports, much as lobbyists have done for decades. The bill died without a hearing.

Campaign donors don’t always win. Burton started out the final day of the session by proclaiming that the entertainment industry, which has been a generous donor to his and many other California politicians’ campaigns, was too arrogant in its demand for an $80-million tax break.

“The sponsors keep coming up like they are entitled to something instead of asking for something,” Burton bellowed. “You’re going to take what we give you.” Which on this day was nothing.

Big-time financial industry lobbyists fared better. For the second year running, they persuaded moderate Assembly Democrats to side with Republicans and kill legislation by Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) that would have granted Californians greater privacy over their financial affairs.

Deriding the lower house as “Romper Room,” Speier scoffed at last-minute maneuvers in which the bill’s foes tried to hijack her legislation, water it down, then vote for it, hoping to convince voters that they supported greater privacy rights. The issue will live on.

A select few lobbying groups consistently seem to win when it counts.

The Assembly took time out to offer a fawning tribute and resolution to perhaps the most powerful nonelected person in Sacramento, Don Novey. Novey is outgoing president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., a 26,000-member union and one of the biggest campaign donors in California.

In its first bill of the year, the Legislature in January approved with only one no vote and Davis signed into law the guards’ new labor pact, which granted them a pay increase of as much as 37% spread over the next five years. On the last day of the legislative session, a Senate resolution extending the life of a legislative committee that holds oversight hearings into the California Department of Corrections died in the Assembly, without notice or debate.

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Times staff writers Carl Ingram and Nancy Vogel contributed to this report.