CA: Legislature's a tortoise on pensions, a hare on open primary

Sac Bee ^ | 6/23/04 | Dan Walters

[NormsRevenge]

We all know about Aesop's allegorical race between the tortoise and the hare. This week we're seeing a state Legislature as dilatory as the former and as alacritous as the latter.

The Assembly is dragging its feet on a measure that would repeal some very questionable -- and very expensive -- pension benefit increases granted to 3,200 state workers by former Gov. Gray Davis. "All of this was the result of buying Gray Davis," Sam McCall, who in 2002 was an attorney for the California Union of Safety Employees, told The Sacramento Bee. "We would not have got this done if we had not shoved a lot of money his way."

After The Bee published an exhaustive series on how Capitol politicians had vastly expanded eligibility for lucrative "safety system" pensions originally meant for police officers and firefighters, Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, amended one of his bills to repeal safety pensions for milk testers, billboard inspectors and others in nonperilous positions.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez made a tactical error by allowing McClintock's amendments to be placed in a bill on the Assembly floor -- one of the rare times when minority Republicans have won such a parliamentary maneuver. Once the measure was amended, however, Núñez was stuck with it because the Senate -- with President Pro Tem John Burton calling the shots -- pointedly rebuffed the speaker's effort to ship the bill back to the Senate without an Assembly vote. It was, one suspects, the veteran Burton's way of teaching the novice speaker -- the first first-termer ever to hold the position -- a lesson about political gamesmanship.

[NormsRevenge]

When it comes to preserving the financial solvency of the state, fuhgeddaboudit, We'll get back to ya..

When it comes to protecting their electoral nests,, Katie bar the door. You never seen them move that fast before. ;-)

[NormsRevenge]

Go Tom!