Some Win, Some Lose in Rush to Adjourn

A marathon session of the Legislature stumbled to a frenetic finish shortly before sunrise Thursday with lawmakers killing a bill to expand the death penalty and refusing to confirm four appointees of Gov. George Deukmejian to important state posts.

Acting under the long shadow of a surprise FBI investigation of suspected corruption in the Capitol, legislators anxious to adjourn rammed through hundreds of bills to the governor with little debate and watched scores of others perish when the clock ran out at midnight.

Among those approved were bills that would require students to perform well in high school as a condition of obtaining a driver’s license, that would crack down harder on street gangs, and that would make sure students in grades 7 to 12 to receive AIDS prevention instruction unless their parents object.

Likewise, both houses sent to the governor a newly agreed upon $154-million compromise that would help replace unsafe school buses, construct highway projects and help low-income and poor elderly people weatherproof their homes in an effort to reduce winter heating costs.

The seven-bill package is financed from funds obtained in a federal lawsuit against oil companies in the 1970s who overcharged consumers. Lawmakers and the governor had been at odds for two years over how to split the funds but agreed to a compromise that sailed through both houses easily.

For most legislation approved at the final session, Deukmejian has 30 days to sign or veto it or let it become law without his signature.

The tension-wracked final day of a legislative session is always fraught with confusion, hair-trigger tempers, liquor on the breaths of some and an ever-tenacious corps of lobbyists seeking any opportunity to recoup earlier losses.

But this time around, for the first time in recent memory, the Legislature attempted to comply with the constitutional midnight adjournment deadline for most legislation and abandoned its traditional practice of ignoring the real world and stopping the clock.

However, game-playing to get around the deadline continued for hours as many desperate legislators, who angered some colleagues, tried to resuscitate dead bills by creative parliamentary maneuvering. Some succeeded, but most lost as the final gavel fell in the Senate at 4:42 a.m. and in the Assembly at 4:46 a.m.

As the chaos reached a crescendo in the Senate, veteran Sen. Ralph C. Dills (D-Gardena), who meticulously keeps track of minute details, briefly found himself caught up in the confusion.

“I’m severely handicapped,” he sarcastically apologized as he searched through papers on his desk. “I didn’t have as much to drink as other people.”

Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), who complained bitterly about the gamesmanship and the bending of rules to get bills considered, declared, “The people will never understand what we did tonight. . . . (But) they will understand that we used parliamentary maneuvers. Rules are meant to be obeyed.”

Partially in response to state Supreme Court decisions returned when Rose Elizabeth Bird was chief justice, the death penalty bill called for expansion of capital punishment to cover the killing of a Juvenile Court witness to prevent testimony, mayhem with intent to maim or permanently disfigure, rape with a foreign object and certain arson crimes.

The measure, which had been considered a virtual cinch to be passed in this election year, would also have allowed juveniles convicted of first-degree murder to be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

The bill by Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia), a former Los Angeles police chief, died in the Assembly on a 50-14 vote, four short of the the required two-thirds majority, when it got caught in the time squeeze. In the confusion, the Senate also voted 17-4 for the bill, 10 short of passage. But someone discovered it was not properly before the upper house and the vote was stricken.

In an angry rebuke of Deukmejian, the Democratic-controlled Senate refused to confirm two of his appointees to the Board of Education and his latest nominee to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. Additionally, the Rules Committee rejected his appointee to head up the administrative branch of the state Division of Industrial Accidents.

Board of Education nominees Gloria Sun Hom of Palo Alto and Kenneth L. Peters, former superintendent of the Beverly Hills Unified School District, were rejected amid charges by Democrats that the two opposed bilingual education programs. Republicans kept the nominations of Hom and Peters technically alive, however, by moving to have the action reconsidered when the Legislature reconvenes in December to start the 1989-90 session.

Wayne R. Smith, a deputy general counsel on the staff of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, was accused by Democrats of holding a pro-employer and anti-labor bias.

Long-seething Democratic anger at what they called the Deukmejian Administration’s deliberate attempt to sabotage the deeply troubled workers’ compensation appeals program boiled over on the governor’s nomination of John R. Sullivan as administrative director of the industrial accidents division.

‘To Its Knees’

Democrats termed Sullivan “well-qualified” for the post, but Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) said he feared Sullivan would continue to carry out what he insisted was Deukmejian’s intention “to bring the system to its knees.”

“We have no alternative way of sending a message to the governor” except to reject Sullivan, he said.

Both houses narrowly approved the teen-age driver bill by Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) that would require would-be motorists under 18 to stay on track for graduating with their class, maintain a good attendance record and not be kicked out of school for robbery or selling drugs, among other things.

The Legislature also sent to Deukmejian:

- An anti-gang measure that would make it a crime to participate in a street gang with knowledge that its members intend to engage in criminal activities and that would stiffen penalties for gang-related crimes. The measure was carried by Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys) and sponsored by Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner and City Atty. James K. Hahn.

- Legislation by Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) that would increase to $22 from $20 the first offense fine for failing to wear a vehicle seat belt. The additional money would finance projects for persons who suffered major head injuries.

- A motorist protection bill by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda) that would require gravel trucks on Jan. 1 to be equipped with seals, flaps and fenders to prevent sand and rocks from spilling onto highways and vehicle windshields. In 1990, many trucks would be required to cover their gravel loads as well.

- A bill by Assemblyman Bill Jones (R-Fresno) that would allow doctors to test for exposure to the AIDS virus after obtaining informed rather than written consent from the patient and that would allow the doctor to inform other health-care workers, such as nurses and technicians, of the patient’s condition.

Contributing to this story was Times staff writer Noel K. Wilson.