INTERVIEW: Exiting the Podium

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Exiting the Podium

INTERVIEW: After leaving post of speaker, Assemblyman Robert Hertzberg still faces budget, other big battles.

By HOWARD FINE and DARRELL SATZMAN

Staff Reporters





Not so long ago, Willie Brown only half-jokingly declared himself “Speaker for Life” of the California state Assembly. But now, 10 years after term limits took effect, the speakership has become more transitory, with six speakers in the last seven years.

Last week, Assemblyman Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, turned over the Assembly Speaker’s gavel that he held for only 20 months to fellow Angeleno Herb Wesson.

Because of term limits, Hertzberg, known for his trademark bear hugs and frequent use of Yiddish-isms, must leave the Assembly at the end of this year’s session. Just before he relinquished the speakership, Hertzberg reflected on his time at the helm.

Question: You’ll be termed out at the end of the year. What do you plan to do?

Answer: I’m coming back to L.A. I’ve got people talking to me all over the country and around the world with all kinds of offers and all kinds of deals but I haven’t paid much attention because I’m trying to solve the problems of the day and finish the job.

Q: It doesn’t sound like you want to try for another public office right away?

A: I do not. I’m tired and I want to take care of my kids.

Q: But never say never?

A: I may come back. I’m looking at the Attorney General’s Office, I’m looking at the Treasurer’s Office as possibilities. But I’ll spend three years analyzing every statute about what they do and how they work and try to develop a vision and a plan. The vision and plan that I’ve articulated and lived as speaker and as a member of the Legislature I’ve been thinking about for 20 years. I didn’t just come into the job and say “oh golly gee shucks, now what do I do?”

Q: What’s your take on the governor’s race?

A: I think at the end of the day, Davis wins. It’s going to be tough. It’s always tough for any L.A. mayor to win because everybody runs against L.A. We export our smog to Riverside, we steal our water from San Diego, we the steal the water from the Central Valley and San Francisco doesn’t want to be like L.A. So you’ve got this environment where it’s hard for any L.A. mayor to win. But it’s going to be a dynamic race and there’s going to be a lot of back and forth and a lot of money spent.

Q: What was your reaction when you heard about Enron’s collapse?

A: I remember the arrogance. I’ve met Ken Lay many times, talked to him many times. A very affable fellow, but (he had) this arrogance about the free (power) market. I also remember (State Attorney General) Bill Lockyer’s comment last year about putting Ken Lay in prison. A lot of people might go to jail as this keeps unraveling. It’s pretty amazing stuff.

Q: You talk to the average Californian and the most notable thing to have happened in Sacramento in the past year is the mishandling of the energy situation. Is that frustrating?

A: I’m out there on the cutting edge trying to fix stuff and be proactive and the only way I can determine if the job rating goes up or down is if the educational institutions improve or the economy gets better. Those are my indicators, and it’s not how much ink I get in the newspapers.

Q: The biggest unresolved issue in the energy crisis has been the need to craft a bond package to refill state coffers emptied last year by power purchases. And the stumbling block has been how to repay the bonds. Has there been progress on that front?

A: We’ll see what happens now that we’ve got a rate agreement proposed. That’s very, very important. It’s one of my top priorities because the energy crisis has turned into a financial crisis and it’s not over. We’ve got to get those bonds issued and the debt repaid.

Q: If this rate agreement goes through, when is the state going to sell the bonds?

A: By the time we get them to the market it will probably be July or August. There may be some litigation because this is California and somebody always litigates. We put a provision in the law last year that requires a direct appeal to the (California) Supreme Court with an expedited process. We were anticipating that if there was litigation there would be a hearing but we wouldn’t have to stop the whole thing.

Q: How much money does the state owe for electricity?

A: The number is $10.3 billion. That’s how much that is owed. Of the $10.3 billion, we’ve gotten the cash back on $4.1 billion because we have bridge financing from J.P. Morgan. So $6.2 billion is the actual amount of money we have out of our treasury that we’ve loaned from the general fund to pay for electricity.

Q: The governor could still make revisions to the budget, but what’s your read on the size of the deficit for next year?

A: The governor put it out as $12.5 billion. Of that hole, he puts $500 million in for reserves so the actual hole is $12 billion.

Q: The budget is predicated on an economic recovery by the end of this year?

A: That’s right. And if it doesn’t happen there will be deeper and more sustained cuts. It’s that simple.

Q: There’s been a fair amount of criticism about Davis’ $100 billion-plus budget as being full of accounting trickery. What’s your view?

A: I understand that argument, but what are we going to do shut down the prisons? Instead of 20 kids per class, are we going to change that to 28 kids? Are we going to say to people that we’re going to close more trauma care centers? They are very hard decisions, so I think any good manager would look at this and say I’ve got to get through this rough time.

Q: How will local governments fare in the belt tightening?

A: There was a real distaste in the Legislature before term limits for local government, now the people in the state Legislature are local elected officials. They’ve lived through this post Proposition 13 dysfunctional relationship and they came up to defend the realm if you will. There’s no issue in the state Legislature where you get more signatures and more support than you do for local government. So the odds of taking money from local government is slim to zero.

Q: Is that a function of term limits?

A: No question. It’s one of the huge unintended consequences of term limits. And that’s a good thing. What’s happened is all these local elected officials have come out of a non-partisan world so they are much more used to working on an issue-to-issue basis and not a partisan basis.

Q: What’s your take on Proposition 45, the term limits initiative, and term limits in general?

A: I’m philosophical about term limits. The whole world in the last decade has changed and government is nothing less than a reflection of those things. We need new blood in government. I didn’t support the term limits initiative but there were a lot of bright, capable people that came in a result of it who weren’t owned by the system. They are very independent sorts and it’s had a big impact on state politics.

Q: What are some of the accomplishments of the current Legislature?

A: It’s stuff that’s not popular or that doesn’t make a lot of noise. I’ll give you an example. For 16 years, every year the Legislature tried to solve a problem with the state architect and the housing industry about the burden of trying to build (schools). Every year it was a tremendous fight. But we figured out how to restructure that process so the issue of the role that developers have in building schools was solved. Then take the Cal Grants program. It’s the GI Bill for education. It’s allowing kids to go to school, which is the fundamental underpinning of what this economy is all about. You can go down the list and it’s not just things that relate to money.

Q: Gov. Davis and John Burton, president pro tem of the Senate, have had a rocky relationship. Has that been an obstacle to getting things done?

A: At the end of the day, it’s different styles and different values. Davis is much more of a centrist and a moderate and John is a fellow who every time you ask a question gives you a philosophical view of the world and how ultimately it will affect poor people. So it makes for fun copy but at the end of the day it works.

Q: Democrats have proposed a $30 billion bond measure for education, chiefly for expanding and upgrading school facilities. That would be the largest ever to come before California voters.

A: It would be the biggest anywhere on the planet. What we’re looking at is authorizing this over the next two or three ballots. The rate at which we’re growing is five classrooms a day for public education. It’s been a success. We’re building a tenth (UC) campus, we’re building science centers, which are especially valuable to our economy, and we’re trying to pave the way for what’s next in California; intellectual property, not low-wage jobs.


Robert M. Hertzberg

Title: Assemblyman, 40th District

Organization: California State Assembly

Born: Los Angeles 1944

Education: Bachelor’s degree in history, University of Redlands; law degree, Hastings College of Law

Personal: Married, three sons

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