Prop. 93's Achilles Heel

As we reach the beginning of the post-Nuñez and Perata era in the California Legislature, I want to reiterate what I said in a comment thread to the Speaker's top spokesman, almost a year ago, just days after the term limits measure was announced:

If it's so disastrous to (Nuñez') career and future plans to go through with this, why doesn't he sign a simple pledge stating that he will not benefit from a last-minute change in the law? He can certainly run for a State Senate seat, or Congress, or LA mayor, or whatever. But certainly, signing such a pledge would remove any appearance of impropriety, and give the Speaker freedom to serve MORE time in Sacramento, making him even wiser in how to negotiate that difficult terrain.

So can I fax the pledge right over?

The bottom line is that if the law wasn't seen to have benefited the 120 legislators in office to an outsized degree, it would have passed, because this is what turned off liberals and Democrats. George Skelton agrees.

What really stunk up Prop. 93 was an incumbents' sweetheart provision that mostly helped senators, including Perata. It would have allowed incumbents to serve 12 years in their current house regardless of previous service in the other house. So some senators could have spent 18 years in the Legislature, six more than advertised in Prop. 93.

Voters probably would have accepted a straight-up deal that allowed incumbents to choose either the new 12-year arrangement or the old 14-year system, but not be awarded extra "transition" years.

"They could have had term limits on a silver platter, but they got greedy," says Dan Schnur, a Republican consultant who has worked for redistricting reform. "They could have passed it with both hands tied behind their backs."

Of course, there would be no incentive for them to pass a term limits change if they didn't benefit from it. Where would the money come from? Good government groups don't have that kind of scratch.

But if Nuñez and Perata held a joint press conference three weeks before the election and said "We thought it over and we will not seek another term. The other legislators are free to do as they wish, but we believe in improving the state of California more than ourselves," then the "No" side would have had their legs cut out from under them. It was their entire strategy to make the proposition a referendum on the leadership. And liberals and Democrats had problems with the narrow tailoring of the initiative. They would have gotten the 4% they needed to pass the thing; all they had to do was sign my pledge.

That said, I'm very excited with Darrell Steinberg as the new President Pro Tem; he's a solid progressive. As for the Assembly, if this part of the palace intrigue is true, there's going to be some serious pushback:

Meanwhile, very reliable sources tell me that Democratic Assemblymember Charles Calderon has been trying to put together a deal with the Republicans in the Assembly-who number 32 in all-and to cobble together at least 9 Democrats in the body to get to 41, the magical number to become Speaker.

If we have a Lieber-Speaker in the midst, that's not going to work out well, to put it charitably. This needs some attention.