10-12-07 by dugan
It’s easy to smell a rat when Chevron and other oil companies seem to be getting a subsidy on the backs of California consumers. It’s often hard to tell how the rat got in, but Evan Halper of the L.A. Times follows the money in today’s story about a rigged late-night deal that Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate leader Don Perata forced through a too-compliant Legislature. (see below for why it happens that way)
The story involves a bill pushed by Nunez, ostensibly to fund biolfuels, and one by Perata ostensibly to improve Bay Area ferry service. Both passed, with corporate-friendly last-minute amendments, in the last wee hours of the legislative session. OWD has long opposed the Nunez bill, given that Chevron put $50,000 into a Democratic Party fund controlled by the Speaker even as the bill was being written.
From the story:
The Nuñez bill, AB 118, would raise taxes on consumers to fund $210 million in new energy subsidies and clean-air programs. [State Sen. Alan] Lowenthal is among a group of environmental policy experts in the Senate who says a large share of the money could end up going to oil companies to fund pollution-reduction measures already required by law.
By the time the final version of the bill reached the Senate, Lowenthal said, there was no time left to amend it to preclude that scenario.
The subsidies would be paid for with increased vehicle registration fees: the ‘car taxes’ Schwarzenegger once promised were off the table. The legislation would increase the fee by as much as $11 and tack new fees on boat and trailer owners.
Anti-tax groups and others are demanding a veto. Administration officials say the governor has not decided whether to sign the bill.
It was bad enough that the bill would tax motorists for research that oil companies, awash in cash, should be funding. That Chevron and friends would reap the tax money themselves is nauseating.
One good thing: The California Energy Commission told Halper that Chevron would absolutely not get funds from AB118. The simple fact that the story was written may, just possibly, prevent its most odious outcome–if Gov. Schwarzenegger even signs it.
The story appeared on the same day that Nunez defended his spending, from campaign funds, on high-end overseas travel and shopping sprees at places like Louis Vuitton Paris and a tony wine shop in Bordeaux. In a soft-ball interview aired today on KQED public radio, Nunez countered critics by saying, "Every day in the Capitol… I fight for underprivileged people." Yet he jammed through AB118, paid for by the little folks, by sheer force.
From the story:
"This is not a giveaway," Nuñez said. "I don’t see anywhere in the bill where it says oil companies can draw down these dollars. That interpretation is a stretch."
But Senate staffers who reviewed the bill say oil companies, which lobbied aggressively for the measure, would benefit. The staff’s analysis of the legislation called the subsidies "simply a grant program to private sector fuels and energy companies paid for by the public."Add to that: the
Perata was frank about why he helped Nunez get the bill through:
"It was important to the speaker," Perata said. "I didn’t question why it was so important. He is the leader of that house. So I just pushed it. I’ve done that with a number of the bills the speaker has carried. I just put my shoulder against it and got it out of here. I know a lot of people were not overly joyed about that."
But Perata also needed something: the speaker’s help in getting his own cause, the expansion of ferry service in the Bay Area, out of the Legislature.
"There were people who said my bill will never get out until his gets out," Perata said.
Like the speaker’s bill, Perata’s ferry measure, SB 976, was rewritten in the final hours of the session. It was changed to essentially seize several ferry lines from various cities and put all operations under control of a new five-person authority.
But Perata didn’t mention this:
Perata’s advocacy of ferry service expansion came at the urging of a major donor to his campaigns, Bay Area developer and former ferry company owner Ron Cowan, who has donated more than $116,000 to Perata since 2001. Questions about the cost-effectiveness of an expansion had long undermined their efforts.
There is no question that money infects politics, to the detriment of the ordinary folks who suffer the consequences of legislation written and backed by big money. It’s even worse when it’s done in the dead of night.
Lowenthal, to his credit, voted against AB118. He said of the majority who did otherwise: "Many people who voted for this held their nose when they did."
The reason they said yes to bad, undebated amendments? The legislative rank and file depend for committee assignments, campaign cash and political support on their party leaders, Nunez and Perata. It is for a reason that Assembly Speakers are said to be more powerful than the governor.
The rank and file also gets thousands in direct contributions from, yes, Chevron. More on that later.