Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Sacramento Bee: California Assembly refuses to release members' budget

California Assembly refuses to make public its members' budgets

Published: Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1A
 © Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
The California Assembly says the public has no right to see lawmakers' current office budgets and spending projections, documents that could show whether punishment is doled out for key votes.

Assemblyman Anthony Portantino raised the issue last month, saying that his budget was slashed shortly after casting the lone Democratic vote in the Assembly against this year's controversial budget.

Portantino, The Bee and other media outlets submitted Legislative Open Records Act requests seeking, among other things, current office budgets for each Assembly member and any changes to them.

The answer came Monday: No way.

The Assembly Rules Committee, under the control of Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, said that such documents are exempt under a provision covering "preliminary drafts, notes or legislative memoranda" and correspondence to lawmakers' offices.

"Therefore, records relating to budgets and changes to budgets of the members of the Assembly and Assembly Committees are not subject to mandatory production," said the Assembly's written response.
Portantino, a La Cañada Flintridge Democrat who is eyeing a campaign for Congress, vowed Monday to propose legislation that would "force the books to be opened."

"I'm going to challenge my colleagues," Portantino said. "Do they stand for transparency or behind secrecy?"
Jon Waldie, Assembly administrator, said that projections of members' current budgets and spending can change throughout the year, can contain private information – such as the name of an employee on maternity leave – and are used in private communications to legislators.

"For us, it's a personnel document," he said.

The Assembly does post on its website a list of current staff and lawmaker salaries, and it publishes a detailed list of each member's expenditures each November – but 12 to 24 months after the spending occurs.
Current practices do not allow the public to examine whether members' budgets are raised or lowered after key votes – or to twist arms.

Though Portantino's claim of retribution has not been proved, punishment is nothing new in the Assembly – through the years, leaders routinely have ordered a lawmaker who crosses them into a tiny office known as the "doghouse."

Attorney Peter Scheer of the First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit group promoting free speech, said the Assembly appears to be grasping at straws by denying access to current budget and spending information.

"They're just scrambling to find something" in state law that would allow them to deny disclosure "without getting laughed at – and laughed out of court," Scheer said.

Portantino said that Assembly leaders are hiding behind secrecy. "If they give me what I want, it shows they punished me," he said.

The Assembly has begun cracking down on Portantino after warning him last month that he was on course to overspend by $67,179 this year.

"Although (Pérez) approved one-time allotments for both the first and second quarters of the session year, those allotments have not been approved for the remaining quarters," the letter said.

Portantino is being restricted from sending mail, ordering office supplies, obtaining furniture or equipment, and subscribing to publications. His aides are targeted for unpaid leaves of absences from Oct. 21 through Nov. 30.

Assembly documents obtained from a confidential source show that Portantino was budgeted for $518,000 and was projected to spend $585,179 this year – thus the $67,179 deficit cited by the Rules Committee.
Portantino contends that the figures essentially are meaningless because the Rules Committee can add to or subtract from them at will, thus creating the illusion of overspending.

Assembly Democratic leaders made it clear that his office allocation would be cut if he didn't "fall in line" on budget matters, Portantino said.

Pérez has authority to cut his budget but not to blame him for it, Portantino said.

By the Rules Committee's own admission, Pérez had approved allocations to cover his spending for the first six months of the year, Portantino said, adding that the plug was pulled only after he voted against the state budget.

"There's no doubt in my mind that the punishment was because I didn't vote the way (Pérez) wanted," Portantino said.

Assembly officials paint a different story, saying that Portantino consistently was warned of overspending but did little about it. Pérez bailed him out temporarily, but doing so indefinitely would be unfair to other members, they say.

"It was about Anthony Portantino being incapable or unwilling to balance his own office budget," Pérez's spokeswoman Robin Swanson said of the spending restrictions imposed. "He's been reckless with his spending, so that's what this is about."

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