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4B – Daily News – Saturday, July 31, 2010 How lobbyists have taken over the legislative process By KAREN DE SÁ MediaNews Group Editor’s note: This is part of a series produced by the San Jose Mercury News on impact of lobbyists on Sacremento. Imagine: At a time when Cali- fornia is lurching from crisis to crisis, a legislator has an idea to make life better. He puts together a bill, gathers support, and shep- herds it into law. If only Sacramento worked like that. Instead, it often works like this: A lobbyist has an idea to make life better — but only for his client. The lobbyist writes the bill, shops for a willing lawmaker to introduce it, and lines up the sup- port. The legislator? He has to do little more than show up and vote. This is the path of the "spon- sored bill," a method of lawmak- ing little noticed outside Califor- nia’s capital but long favored on the inside. In many states lobby- ists influence legislators; in Cali- fornia, they have — quite baldly — taken center stage in lawmak- ing. And while lawmakers in recent years have routinely failed to grap- ple with health care, the state bud- get and other matters of public interest, they’ve managed to do the bidding of the private interests who tout sponsored bills at an impressive clip. A Mercury News analysis found that in 2007-2008, the most recent complete two-year legisla- tive session, more than 1,800 bills — about 39 percent of the total — were sponsored by outside inter- ests. And those sponsored bills comprised 60 percent of the legis- lation that was passed into law. This is how plumbing manu- facturers ensured that they — and not state regulators — would con- duct the testing that determines whether drinking faucets sold in California are lead-free. This is how a Los Angeles County bil- lionaire crushed a legal challenge over whether his plans for a new football stadium violated the state’s long-standing environmen- tal protection law. Recalling his first encounters with lobbyists seeking legislative backing for their bills, former Assembly member Joe Canci- amilla said, "It’s like being in a Middle Eastern bazaar. You are surrounded by hawkers saying ‘take this one, no, take this one, no, I’ve got a better one over here.’ The openness of that — the ‘oh yeah, that’s the way things are done’ attitude — was the most shocking." Legislators, continued Pitts- burg funeral home director Canci- amilla, "are supposed to be the buffer between the interest groups and the public — and that buffer no longer exists. Now, they’re a direct conduit." The Mercury News analysis, the first ever undertaken of spon- sored bills in California, revealed: • Sponsored bills swamp the Legislature. They amounted to 42 percent of the bills introduced in the Assembly and a third of the Senate bills. • Profit-seeking bills abound. While advocacy groups, trade associations and government agencies also sponsor legislation, more than 500 of the sponsored bills introduced in the 2007-08 session came from private indus- tries and industry trade groups, often seeking to increase market share, repel regulations or limit lawsuits. • Sponsored bills succeed. Almost half of the 1,883 bills that were sponsored in the last session became law; only about one in five of the 2,982 bills that had no listed sponsor became law. • Everybody does it. Out of 122 legislators who served at least par- tial terms in 2007-2008, just one — Sen. Tom McClintock, R- Thousand Oaks — refused to introduce any sponsored bills. Democrats introduced more spon- sored bills than Republicans, but Republicans introduced a larger percentage of bills sponsored by private interests. Lobbyists have long been known in California as the Third House, referring to their entrenched status alongside the Legislature’s two official houses, the Assembly and Senate. But through interviews with current and former legislators and aides, as well as lobbyists and outside government experts, the Mercury News documented a changed pat- tern: Today, lobbyists function almost as a shadow legislature, pulling the strings at every turn for short-term lawmakers who have become accustomed to letting pri- vate interests monopolize the pub- lic debate. At the center of this reality is the sponsored bill. "You don’t learn this in Ameri- can civics class," said Derek Cressman, a regional director for the nonpartisan group Common Cause. "You don’t learn that some interest group drafts this and gives it to a legislator along with a con- tribution and says: ‘We would like a law introduced.’" Cressman said the result is that "organizations with deep financial pockets can present their issues to the legislature, and those that don’t are in essence invisible." James Wedick goes further. Now retired, Wedick was the lead undercover FBI agent who estab- lished a phony shrimp processing company in California in 1985, then documented lawmakers tak- ing bribes to support a sponsored bill crafted to help his fake busi- ness. The FBI’s sting operation known as Shrimpscam landed five legislators in prison but — he con- cedes — had little long-term effect. " Midnight moves Here’s one example of how sponsored bills hijack the process of lawmaking — allowing private agendas to overwhelm the public interest. In 2007, the Legislature took up a bill to authorize the spending of a $2.8 billion affordable hous- ing bond approved in a voter ref- erendum. The bill initially sought to ensure that projects would be efficient and geographically diverse, and that they would reduce homelessness. But at the urging of a lobbyist for the sports and entertainment giant Anschutz Entertainment Group, a different, sponsored ver- sion of the bill suddenly appeared — on the last days of the legisla- tive session. Several legislators whose names were attached to the bill dropped off, leaving only Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, D-Los Angeles, as sponsor of the amended bill. It cleared the Senate after mid- night, and the Assembly at 3:26 a.m., among the flurry of bills at the end of session. Hugh Bower, the lead staff member of the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development, was stunned when the bill came up that night; he had been told the issue was dead. There was such chaos, Bower recalls, that one committee member still thought the next day that the amended bill had died. What was Anschutz’s interest? Its version of the bill allowed some affordable housing funds to be used for parks, landscaping and fancy sidewalks in the neighbor- hood around the company-owned Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. Anschutz insisted its changes would let any "Business Improve- ment District" — a specially-cre- ated association of property own- ers and government agencies — apply for the funds. But only the district near the Staples Center did, receiving the maximum award of $30 million, according to state housing officials. Big winners Outside sponsorship breeds success; sponsored bills are far more likely than bills without sponsors to become law. In the Mercury News analysis, almost half of all the bills spon- sored by businesses and industry groups ended up signed by the governor — a far higher percent- age than bills that have no sponsor. For the 2007-2008 legislative session, 177 of the 347 bills spon- sored by private interests that were introduced in the Assembly — 51 percent — were passed into law. In contrast, only 326 of 1,793 bills introduced in the Assembly that had no sponsor — or 18 percent — became law. On the Senate side, the dispari- ty was modestly smaller. About 43 percent of the bills introduced on behalf of private-interest sponsors in the last session became law; only 24 percent of Senate bills that were introduced without a sponsor became law. Peter Detwiler, who has direct- ed the Senate Local Government Committee for 28 years — mak- ing him one of Sacramento’s most seasoned bill analysts — said the findings demonstrate the power outsiders have gained as legisla- tors arrive in office facing a ticking clock on their terms in office. Private vs. public The narrow purpose of a spon- sored bill is rarely a secret in the Capitol; the committee analyses make sure of that. Those analyses, written by leg- islative staff, often bluntly note that the legislation has a private rather than public benefit. And while at times those warnings help to defeat the bills, other times the legislators approve them — and insist they have done the right thing. Consider these examples from the 2007-2008 session. When the PowerFlare Corpo- ration of Atherton sponsored a bill to require that electronic roadside beacons replace all standard flares now in use by the state Highway Patrol, the bill was pitched as way to enhance motorists’ safety. But the bill analysis noted that it would "significantly increase demand for electronic beacons, which are manufactured by the sponsor of the bill," and that the cost to the taxpayers of replacing flares with beacons would be high. The bill died in committee. When MySpace sponsored a bill bolstering its ability to prevent individuals with certain criminal records from using its site, it extolled the legislation as a way to keep children safe from sexual predators on the Internet. But nes- tled in the bill was a provision that would have given the online social networking site broad immunity from legal liability to anyone whose access had been restricted. A committee analyst wrote that the bill "raises troubling issues of manipulation of the legislative process to protect the financial and business interests of corporate entities, under the thin guise of providing additional tools to law enforcement." The bill passed the Assembly, but later died in the Senate. And when the Plumbing Man- ufacturers Institute sponsored a bill providing an industry-con- trolled system for testing drinking faucets and fountains, it promised the system would better protect Californians from lead in their drinking water. But a committee consultant characterized the plumbing group intention as "a not-so-subtle process for subvert- ing what legislators thought they were enacting" — a way to protect the public from a harmful chemi- cal. Despite protests from more than 50 public health and con- sumer organizations, the bill was signed into law in September 2008. Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Monte- bello, who introduced the bill, said in an interview he has "no con- cerns" with the industry oversee- ing testing. "As a matter of fact, I believe the problem with regulato- ry boards in general is that they don’t recruit or appoint enough people from the industry that they regulate." Calderon received $13,900 from the institute and member faucet makers during the 2007- 2008 term. Some observers argue these private interest bills do, ultimately, benefit at least a portion of the public. Thad Kousser, associate professor of political science at UC San Diego, says that legisla- tors who introduce sponsored bills on behalf of industries are doing exactly what they are sent to Sacramento to do: represent the interests of their district. But former state senator McClintock, the sole legislator who on principle did not introduce a single sponsored bill in the last session, argues that constituents’ interests have little to do with it. Tehama County’s Personal/Professional Service Directory Bankruptcy Attorney Local Bankruptcy Attorney Jocelyn C. Olander 530-824-0288 Free Consultation Payment Plans Available Web: www.jcoattyatlaw.com email: mail@jcoatty atlaw.com A federally qualified Debt Relief Agency under 11 U.S.C. 101(12(A)) Embroidery AT YOUR SERVICE! $ 9900 3 month Clock Repair 530-736-7079 Grandpa’s Clocks Jim Paul 20910 Pebblestone Dr. Red Bluff Shelf & 31 Day Clocks Repaired Call for appt. Member NAWCC Cuckoo Clocks, Anniversary, Wall, Clock Repair James W. 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