June 18, 1999
By Doug Willis
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
SACRAMENTO - It is called ``The Members List,'' but critics say that's just a polite name for political pork. And pork is sometimes essential to get a state budget passed.
The list features legislators' pet projects left out of Senate and Assembly drafts of the state budget or pulled out and set aside by the joint Senate-Assembly budget committee.
They are in the budget now, thanks to a mumbled motion and voice vote at 4:40 a.m. last Friday - the last item in the committee's final overnight budget-writing session.
The members items range all over the map - by subject, geography and amount.
There's $5,000 for the Weedpatch Camp Historic Site Restoration, $20,000 for a slide for the National City Municipal Pool, $25,000 for a bus stop in the city of McFarland, $80,000 for a used fire truck for the city of Firebaugh, $300,000 for Little League and soccer fields in the city of Willits.
They include big-ticket items, too: $2 million for restoration work at Mission San Juan Capistrano, $1 million for a 5,000-seat horse arena at the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds in Lancaster, $5 million for rehabilitation work at the de Young Museum and Conservancy of Flowers in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
The list does not identify the provisions' sponsors.
Although political pork is a popular target, it has at times been crucial in enacting budgets.
In 1971, for example, the state budget fell one vote short of passage when Assemblyman Vince Thomas, D-San Pedro, surprised his colleagues by abstaining. He refused to vote until the budget included new restrooms for the visitors pier at Santa Catalina Island, in his district.
Altogether, 451 items - mostly local construction projects - totaling $181.8 million were added to this year's $81 billion budget without public debate in the budget committee's final vote.
That amounts to about $5 for each California resident. Members' list items are always among the first thing governors look at when they get out their veto pencil.
The budget committee chairwoman, Assemblywoman Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, bristled Monday at the use of the word ``pork'' in reporters' questions about the members list.
``A large group of them are of statewide significance. They are not superfluous pork,'' she said.
Assembly Republican leader Scott Baugh of Huntington Beach described the members list items as pork, but said he wasn't worried about it.
``My advice is don't get too excited about any pork like this in the budget. The governor is going to need a box of blue pencils (for vetoes) to balance it,'' he joked.
While Republicans are more inclined than Democrats to criticize fat in the state budget, they dove in for their share, too.
The 72 Democrats in the Legislature authored 260 of the Members List items, totaling $118.7 million. The Legislature's 47 Republicans sponsored 191 proposals totaling $61.1 million. That's an average of $1.6 million per Democrat and $1.3 million per Republican.
The Legislature's only Green Party member, Assemblywoman Audie Bock of Piedmont, beat both parties in frugality - or perhaps lack of clout. She had no Member's List items.
Return
to Frontpage