Sybarites in Sacramento

Everyone else gets pruned but not California's lawmakers

After three years under the spending limits imposed by Proposition 13, California is at the frontier of government retrenchment. Medical clinics for the poor are shutting down, parks are going to seed and the state's far-flung highway system is in disrepair. Despite such cutbacks, a deficit of at least $75 million in this fiscal year's state budget looks likely. But forced austerity is not universal. California's state legislators have seen fit to spare one group from the draconian reductions: themselves. While the expenditures in real dollars on social services have decreased, the money for the legislature has doubled since 1975 and ballooned by a third this year alone. California's assemblymen and senators spend more on their own care and feeding than lawmakers in any other state.

For appearance sake, the lawmakers have kept their salaries relatively modest: $28,000 a year. The fat--in rich, deep veins--lies elsewhere. Each of the 40 senators and 80 assemblymen gets an addition al $50 a day tax free while the legislature's work is under way: an average of $12,000 apiece this year. Each lawmaker receives a monthly car allowance of $265 plus a gasoline credit card to use without limit. Many collect an extra $6 for custom car washes. There are other travel perquisites: many legislators traveled to Washington at state expense to lobby Congress for the tax exemption on their $50 per diem.

Office furnishings are a sizable cut above government issue. The office wing of the capitol in Sacramento is undergoing a $3 million sprucing up. That refurbishing will not encompass Assemblyman Walter Ingalls' principal office, which is outside the capitol. But that outside office is by no means shabby: at taxpayers' expense, Ingalls recently spent $8,000 for wallpaper, $10,000 for carpeting and $16,000 for furniture. His is not an extreme case. After installing new blue carpeting in his office, another legislator tossed out his set of California statute books in red bindings and ordered a new edition in blue. To sustain themselves during their budget-cutting marathons, the lawmakers spent $7,950 in one month on catered meals, $574 on ice cream, $3,400 on bottled water.

Much of the $106 million budget for the legislature goes to pay the salaries of its 1,000 employees. Ninety-three of those are sergeants at arms, who have been routinely dispatched to pick up laundry, chauffeur wives and, in one case, to feed live mice regularly to a pet snake belonging to former Assembly Speaker Bob Moretti. The majority of the legislative staff, of course, is engaged in legitimate work. But critics question the propriety, let alone the need, of hiring 200 new aides this year. Most of the 78 additional senate staff members, according to President Pro Tempore David Roberti, were needed to help figure out how the senate's budget can be cut.

Not all the legislators revel in the luxury. Last June, Senator Ollie Speraw proposed a bill that would have limited the increase in the legislators' own budget to 7%. He was shouted down. Says one of his few allies, Assemblyman William Filante: "Waste is the main problem in the state's budget crunch. The important thing is the attitude of the legislators: arrogance."

A citizen rebellion is building: Ralph Morrell, 62, heads a small watchdog group called Operation Slush Fund and has spent the last year exposing the legislators' "unconscionable extravagance." Lee Phelps, 51, is president of a statewide coalition called Citizens Asserting Supremacy over Taxation (CAST). Says he: "There are no controls, except by the legislators themselves. We've got to change the rules in this game where the legislators play around with our money. We've got to become the umpire." To that end, CAST has collected most of the 554,000 signatures necessary to put a measure on the ballot that would force the legislature to specify clearly the purposes of all appropriations. If the initiative passes, California's profligate legislators will find themselves in a chastening light. The prospect of elected officials justifying their ice cream bills has California taxpayers smacking their lips.

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