Davis’ State of the State Tackles Campaign as Well as Economy
POLITICS
by Howard Fine
Campaign politics was never far from the surface of Gov. Gray Davis’ third annual State of the State speech.
For starters, Davis took an indirect swipe at likely Republican challenger, former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan. For the first time, Davis came down on municipal utilities, along with the out-of-state private power generators. “Merchant (power) generators and even some of our own municipal utilities were gouging us unconscionably,” he said.
As mayor, of course, Riordan told Los Angeles Department of Water & Power administrators that while they should sell surplus power to the state, they should also safeguard the financial interest of local ratepayers by charging close-to-market rates.
Davis also tried to defang a potentially embarrassing initiative on the November ballot with his promise not to balance the state budget “on the backs of local government.” Local public officials, desperate to protect their budgets against a repeat of the $4 billion transfer of locally-earmarked funds to state coffers that took place in the early 1990s, had been talking about putting an initiative on the ballot.
Finally, Davis moved to appease labor with his request to legislators to pass a bill by state Sen. Richard Alarcon, D-Van Nuys, to make retroactive to Sept. 11 the increases in unemployment benefits passed last year. Those increases went into effect on Jan. 1.
Initiative Reform
For anyone who grimaces at the memory of having to wade through dozens of confusing ballot initiatives on the March and November 2000 ballots, relief may be on the horizon. Not only are there fewer initiatives on the March ballot only six qualified but proposals have surfaced to make initiatives less confusing.
Last year, Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, formed a committee to examine the state’s initiative process and recommend ways to make it more responsive to voters. He named as commission chair David Abel, a local public policy guru who publishes two local newsletters and founded the group “Better Schools, Better Neighborhoods” to speed up the Los Angeles Unified School District’s process for siting new schools.
The finished report will be presented to Hertzberg and the Legislature in the next few weeks. Abel last week gave a sneak preview of some of the main recommendations:
-Establishing a process where initiative proponents and legislators can try to reach agreement on the initiative language or to resolve differences and avoid an initiative altogether.
-Require financial disclosure forms to accompany the ballot listings so voters know who is funding both sides of an initiative.
-Stricter enforcement of the “one-subject” rule for initiatives, so that, for example, a “parks and water project bond measure” could only contain one or the other.
Wachs Advice
Former veteran L.A. City Councilman Joel Wachs, who resigned his post last fall to head up the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York, recently dispensed some advice to new council members.
“To be true to themselves, to stick up for what they believe in and fight for it,” Wachs said in the Jan. 4 issue of the Jewish Journal. “I hope that they will do that when the lobbyists come calling behind closed doors,” he said, noting the intense pressure placed on him by lobbyists for the developers of the Staples Center who were seeking a $150 million city subsidy.
Wachs also said he loves his new post “For 30 years in politics, I had to ask people for money. Now I get to give it away and for a good cause, for something I believe in and am passionate about.”
As for politics? “I don’t long for that anymore,” said the three-time L.A. mayoral candidate.
Staff reporter Howard Fine can be reached by phone at (323) 549-5225, ext. 227, or by e-mail at
[email protected]
