Posted on 05/04/2006 9:28:16 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Despite the honest policy disputes over Kevin Murray's bill to seal financial records in divorce cases, the debate over S.B. 1015 has focused on just about everything but policy.
The story of this bill is a story of how lawmakers and advocates make political calculations. It is about how to know when you're beat, and about cutting your losses to limit the political damage that your opposition may inflict on you down the road. To some, it is a tale of political cowardice. To others, it is a tale of the ultimate political pragmatism and democracy in action.
It is a parable of how business gets done in the Capitol halls and the ways political power can manifest itself, both through direct and indirect pressures. It is a story of how a bill really becomes a law.
The fight over this one little bill involves two Senate leaders, one Assembly speaker, a well-connected multi-billionaire, one of Sacramento's largest lobbying firms, a nasty divorce case, women's groups, newspaper publishers, identity theft, the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, Bill Clinton, Jennifer Lopez, and the California Supreme Court.
The bill to protect financial privacy in divorce cases is not expected to move off the Assembly floor this week, and some in the Capitol now believe S.B. 1015 faces still longer delays. If the bill regains momentum, the likely end product is legislation that proponents say will help protect a constitutional right to privacy. Critics blast the proposal as a restriction on the public's right to court documents and a favor for a major Democratic donor and his lobbyist pal.
As with many parables, there is no shortage of irony in this story. Some say it is a story of Ron Burkle's personal quest for privacy, yet this fight is precisely what is keeping his name in the headlines. And this bill is being pushed hardest by powerful Democrats who as recently as 2004 went to the ballot to fight for more public access to government documents.
Burkle's fingerprints are not on the bill directly, but some of his close associates have been among those pushing hardest for quick passage. Burkle's former CEO, Darius Anderson, is one of Sacramento's most well-connected lobbyists. And while Burkle has not employed a lobbyist to push for the bill, Mary Kinney, a lobbyist in Anderson's firm Platinum Advisors, was seen working the bill in Assembly Appropriations last week on a "pro-bono" basis. When the bill came before the Assembly Judiciary committee last month, two other Platinum lobbyists--Brett Granlund and Tim Lynch, were spotted at the committee hearing. Burkle gave Granlund $50,000 for his Assembly campaign in 2000.
Supporters of the bill say Burkle's role in this legislative fight has been overplayed. The legislation may not be signed into law in time to keep Burkle's divorce records sealed. And they point out that Burkle's records were public for months before the Legislature passed a law in 2003 that helped put them under seal. Many media organizations already have those documents in hand, and details were published in January in a long article in the Los Angeles Business Journal.
But Burkle, who was himself the victim of identity theft in 1999, has been a supporter of privacy protections in the past. And the perception that S.B. 1015 is "the Burkle Bill" remains in the Capitol, in part because of timing.
Burkle's high-profile run-in with a New York Post gossip columnist and his efforts to purchase newspapers from McClatchy Company have made him a familiar name, even though he has been a prominent political donor to Democrats and Democratic causes for years. He also has given heavily to Governor Schwarzenegger's campaigns.
Lost in the discussion of the politics of the bill has been the policy battle of the public's right to know versus the individual's right to privacy. Instead, the bill has been amended and re-amended in an effort to appease various interest groups.
The original sponsor of the bill, attorney Fred Silberberg, penned a scathing column in the Los Angeles Daily Journal this week, criticizing the legislative process for rendering his bill useless.
"With the bill in its present form, I wonder why anyone up there in Sacramento is even bothering to continue to try and have it enacted." he wrote. "It seems as though certain people in the Legislature continue to push the bill solely to get credit for having implemented the legislation, and certainly not because they are trying to protect the constitutional right to privacy."
The newspaper publishers' association has aggressively opposed the bill on First Amendment grounds. The National Organization for Women (NOW) has expressed concerns about the bill at various points along the way because of fears that the bill would restrict their ability to document gender discrimination in divorce judgments. They are, for now, still opposed to the bill.
The State Bar's family-law division is among the organizations supporting the bill.
The saga of this particular piece of legislation began in 2003 when then-San Diego Assemblywoman Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego first introduced the bill. The measure passed, and was immediately invoked by Burkle's attorneys to try to seal his divorce records. Burkle was challenged in court by his wife's attorneys, and joined by CNPA, the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press. Eventually, the Second District Court of Appeal agreed with Janet Burkle and the news agencies and ruled the law unconstitutional.
As the state Supreme Court considers whether or not to hear Burkle's appeal of the appellate-court decision, proponents are pushing for a new law, one they believe will pass constitutional muster.
Not all Democrats are thrilled with this bill. Among them is Sen. Joe Dunn, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Because Murray gutted and amended a Senate bill that was already on the Assembly side, the bill will likely not be heard in Dunn's committee, thanks to a quirk in legislative rules.
NOW has been opposed to the bill most of the way, and that has put some members in a tough spot--caught between their leadership and an organization that many like to boast support from.
Meanwhile, Assembly members have found themselves caught in the crossfire. Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, was committed not to pass an unconstitutional bill out of his committee, and other members, including Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, did not want to run afoul of NOW.
But the pressure was on from the speaker's office. Núñez's chief of staff, Dan Eaton, had actively been pushing for votes, making it clear to members that this bill was a priority to Núñez.
To keep the bill moving, S.B. 1015 was amended in the Judiciary Committee to make the bill more amenable to NOW. But NOW opposed the bill in Assembly Appropriations the following week when new amendments were introduced that they said undermined the spirit of what was agreed to in Judiciary Committee. NOW criticized Murray for trying to hold a hearing on the bill before the amendments had even been in print.
The committee chair, Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park, agreed, and postponed the hearing for a week. The bill's supporters say the amendments were consistent with the agreement made in the judiciary committee hearing. Eventually, the bill cleared the committee on a 12-3 vote.
The bill's passage was secured through the efforts of the speaker, who called various members of the caucus, lobbyists for NOW and other groups into one-on-one meetings with Núñez as he sought to get a bill out of his house quickly.
The question for lawmakers, and for groups like NOW, is whether registering a no vote on principle was worth angering the speaker, who has the power to punish members through committee assignments or deciding the fate of various pieces of legislation. It is also no accident, sources say, that Murray has been chosen as the author this year. As chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Murray has the power and the ability to decide whether many Assembly members' major legislation lives or dies.
"We're putting our friends in a precarious position, between us and the speaker and the chair of 'Approps,' and we know that," says NOW lobbyist Jodi Hicks. "I don't know what the direct consequences are, but we feel pressure. This bill is splitting everyone so much, that it's making this process difficult."
Núñez spokesman Steve Maviglio says the speaker actively has been trying to broker a compromise among a divided caucus, but bristles at the characterization of the speaker's involvement as having anything to do with doling out political favors, or putting the screws to members for votes. And while he says the bill is of interest to the speaker, he says it is by no means at the top of the speaker's agenda.
"There were concerns raised in caucus about the bill. When there is a controversy, he'll get involved. He likes to get into the middle of things and be the honest broker," says Maviglio.
Sources close to Burkle make sure to point out Burkle himself has not spent any time lobbying in support of this measure. But Burkle is rich, powerful and well connected, and there is no shortage of Capitol denizens eager to please him. And it is not lost on members that Platinum Advisors also has taken an active, if unpaid, interest in this particular bill.
While Núñez says this bill is about good policy and not about politics or Burkle, he did little to disavow skeptics of that notion when he joined Jennifer Lopez and other Hollywood and political celebs at a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton at Burkle's Beverly Hills estate. Núñez also has spent time with Burkle and former-President Bill Clinton, who works as an adviser to Burkle's investment fund.
"This is a bizarre situation," says CNPA lobbyist Tom Newton. There isn't any money involved in this bill directly, but there has been an awful lot of interest."
MALDEF, "Drinko por Cinco" and Anheuser-Busch"
excerpt:
"The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) as well as Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition have been two principal ethnic organizations that have been bought by the Jewish owned Anheuser-Busch Corporation. It is interesting to know that the Jewish Mogul Ron Burkle, who is behind the Chicano candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles Tony Villar (a.k.a. Antonio Villaraigosa), also helped set up some of the deals with the Rainbow Coalition, MALDEF and the Anheuser-Busch Corporation.
At a party thrown by Ron Burkle at his Green Acres mansion in 1998, Jesse Jackson asked the Jewish Mogul to set up a deal with Anheuser-Busch on behalf of his sons Yosef and Jonathan. If the deal was made, Jackson would lay off pushing a boycott of Budweiser in the Black community. Ron Burkle then set up a meeting between his good friend August Busch IV and Yosef Jackson. Both Yosef and Jonathan ended up with a very sweet deal. They were awarded Chicago’s largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship. The sons reportedly paid for the assets, equipment and two buildings with a $6.7 million bank loan. Anheuser-Busch had spent $10.5 million in 1991 for the land and one of the buildings purchased by the Jacksons. Also Ron Burkle hired Jesse Jackson’s mistress Karin Stanford after news that she had bore him an illegitimate son and after questions were being asked about her high salary in a Jackson non-profit organization."
I believe Hillary walked away from Burkle's most recent fund raiser with a cool $1 million.
I didn't know that Burkle and Anderson were so closely connected. Does that explain the chief-of-staff appointment? Darius Anderson was also reported to be Susan Kennedy's best friend and her "best man" in her "marriage" ceremony.
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