Sunday, October 23, 2011

Sacramento Bee: Previous Assembly Speakers have mastered fiscal power

Assembly speakers prove masters at wielding fiscal power

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Over the years, Assembly speakers have exercised enormous power. Here are examples:

WILLIE BROWNA master at using Capitol resources as a hammer, the San Francisco Democrat's most famous clash targeted the "Gang of Five," a quintet stripped of staff and all committee assignments in 1988 for failing to toe the Democratic caucus line.


FABIAN NÚÑEZThe Los Angeles Democrat blessed an across-the-board 6 percent pay hike for Assembly employees and a more selective salary increase for key aides that cumulatively boosted his chief of staff's salary by $42,000 – to $212,000 – in Núñez's final two years as leader. In 2008, the year Núñez left the speakership, then-Assemblyman Hector De La Torre claimed that Núñez ousted him as Rules Committee chairman for complaining that a "golden handshake" offer sweetening pensions for dozens of employees who retired that year was a potential taxpayer ripoff. Nine of the 55 who benefited were Nuñez aides, including his chief of staff. Three years later, detailed Assembly salary data contends that the program saved more than $3 million over a three-year period.


KAREN BASSThe Los Angeles Democrat made waves in 2009 by giving 120 employees pay hikes despite projections of a multibillion-dollar state budget shortfall. She rescinded the raises one day after the media disclosed them. A year later, Bass quietly promoted 20 members of her Democratic caucus and gave them 10 percent salary increases that took effect on her last day as Assembly leader. After Republican Danny Gilmore of Hanford won a hotly contested seat in 2008, Bass rejected his request for funds to supplement his Hanford district office by operating one in Bakersfield as well. His Democratic predecessor, Nicole Parra, had been allowed two district offices in the swing district, which Democrats badly wanted back. "I had to set up a tent in Martin Luther King (Jr.) Park to meet the constituents in southeast Bakersfield," Gilmore said. Parra also took her lumps from Bass, who closed Parra's Capitol office in 2008 and booted staff across the street to smaller digs after the Hanford Democrat bucked the speaker on a budget vote.


JOHN A. PÉREZThe current Assembly speaker, a Los Angeles Democrat, last year honored a long tradition of providing extra office funds for the outgoing speaker. Bass then spent more than $900,000 to operate her Assembly office during a year in which she was running for Congress and missed more Assembly floor sessions not tied to illness – 17 – than any other member.

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