SF Chronicle: Governor lobbied heavily on hundreds of remaining bills

Governor lobbied from all sides as he considers hundreds of bills

Capitol Notebook By Marisa Lagos

Saturday, September 24, 2011

The San Francisco Chronicle

Chronicle Columnist

 

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Gov. Jerry Brown has taken great care in recent weeks to warn his fellow Democrats in the Capitol that his party affiliation doesn't spell a slam dunk for the hundreds of bills they sent him this month.

But the governor, who is being lobbied hard by various interest groups as he considers about 500 bills before an Oct. 9 deadline, also has shown that he's not above party politics when it comes to deciding which measures to sign or veto.

There was his veto message to a parks bill by Republican Sen. Tom Harman, R-Huntington Beach (Orange County), in which the governor said the measure was unnecessary but "what the parks do need is sufficient funding to stay open - something I feel compelled to note the author and his colleagues refused to let the people vote on."

Brown also made some shrewd comments when asked about a letter sent to him Tuesday by Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway of Tulare, and her predecessor, Martin Garrick of Carlsbad (San Diego County).

In that communication, the two attempted to appeal to the governor's sense of bipartisanship in urging him to veto SB202, which would move all citizen-sponsored initiatives off primary ballots and onto general election ballots, when there is higher voter turnout. SB202 would also delay voter consideration of the creation of a rainy-day fund from 2012 - a deal Republicans won in budget negotiations last year - to 2014.

Conway and Garrick argued that moving that rainy-day fund to the 2014 ballot would break a promise and further strain the two parties' rocky relationship in Sacramento. But the letter was sent one day before a Field Poll showed strong support among all voters, including Republicans, for SB202.

"I think they are a little out of touch with their own members, because obviously the public seems to want that, so maybe I should just flaunt the will of the majority of Republicans, independents, Democrats," Brown said, an apparent reference to GOP lawmakers' continued insistence that because voters rejected taxes in 2009, putting them on the ballot again would violate the will of the voters.

The governor, who has, lately, bemoaned the influence of antitax organizations on GOP lawmakers, wasn't done there.

"I look at what bills make sense ... I look at both sides," he said. "But bipartisanship is a rather odd banner for them to march under because of the very tight discipline they have exercised, and not by their leadership but by the ideological constraints they have wrapped themselves in."

Brown also noted that Republicans aren't the only ones lobbying him: He said his phone has been ringing off the hook, and among those calls was one from business magnate Richard Branson, who called from Australia to urge the governor to sign a bill banning shark fin soup in California. On Friday, he said he still hasn't decided whether he'll sign or veto it.

In the hot seat: BART and its Police Department have been taking a lot of heat lately, and it doesn't look like things are easing up anytime soon.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, announced Friday that he will hold a hearing Tuesday on the "training, policies and procedures of the BART Police Department."

The event in the Capitol will begin at 10 a.m. and include testimony from BART general manager Grace Crunican, BART Police Chief Kenton Rainey, and George Perezvelez, chairman of the transit agency's Citizen Review Board.

In a statement, Ammiano said the hearing is an attempt to figure out "what is working and what is not with the BART police."

"With three deaths in three years, I want to ensure that BART police are properly trained and following procedures," he said. "The public's confidence in BART depends on being able to trust their judgment and professionalism."

Fraud alert: Rooting out fraud and waste is a common refrain among politicians, so state leaders must have been heartened by California's latest report on abuse in the state's Medi-Cal system.

The report, conducted annually since 2005, takes a sample of cases from each of the state's Medi-Cal programs and looks at payment errors with an eye toward fraud. The most recent report covers 2009, and showed the lowest error rate ever - 5.45 percent (when the audits began, the rate was 8.4 percent).

But that's still more than $1 billion in erroneous payments, including $228 million in claims that could be fraudulent.

And things weren't quite as rosy for the state's Adult Day Health Care program, which is in the process of shutting down.

The audit found that of the program's total $420 million budget in fiscal year 2009-10, there were about $235 million in erroneous payments and nearly $65 million in potential fraud. Most of those errors were due to people using the program who don't qualify under the medical criteria, officials said.

Lydia Missaelides, who heads up an organization representing the state's 300 centers, disputed the findings, saying the state officials made errors of their own in how they conducted the study, in part because they are "conducting a paper review of claims, not discussing their findings with the providers."

The centers are intended to serve about 37,000 frail, elderly and disabled Californians, offering medical care, physical therapy, exercise, counseling, socializing and other support. But it will be moot next year: Brown and lawmakers axed the service in this year's budget, saving the state about $169 million a year (the remaining funding came from the federal government).