Self-Interest Days in Sacramento : As session nears an end, desire to do the public’s business seems to cool

With this year’s legislative session in Sacramento drawing to a close, once again some lawmakers are putting their own interests ahead of the people’s business.

One example is the sneaky maneuver by Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer to give the upper chamber, and his own office, a bigger cut of the Capitol’s $130 million in officeholder accounts. Under an agreement, the fund had been split 60-40 in favor of the Assembly, but that was before Lockyer slid an extra 1% the Senate’s way last summer and craftily blocked Assembly attempts to restore the original formula.

The matter should have been resolved quietly and quickly. Instead, the Assembly and the Senate have engaged in an unseemly public feud, causing delay in important legislative business.

In another instance that smacks of self-interest, Lockyer has used his considerable clout to derail a measure designed to reduce criminal influence in California’s card club/casino industry.

From January, 1993, to March, 1995, Lockyer received more than $126,499 in campaign contributions from the gambling industry, while another fund he controls brought in more than $104,000.

The Senate leader insists that the now-stalled bill--which would have created a self-funded state gambling commission to work with a gambling enforcement division within the state Department of Justice--is unnecessary. “I am very skeptical of a need to create new bureaucracies just to regulate the card room industry,” Lockyer said. “That segment of the market seems at least relatively flat.”

Flat, perhaps, if one counts only clubs and not money. Gross wagering in card clubs last year generated $8.4 billion, up 12% from the previous year. That sort of money is a magnet for potential criminal activity like money laundering, loan-sharking and extortion.

Reasonable lawmakers on both side of the aisle agree on the need for strong gambling regulation. And proponents are still trying to salvage the idea by placing gambling control language in another bill, SB 431.

Lockyer is unmoved. He will not even reconsider the bill in the Senate Rules Committee. In both this case and the officeholder money matter, Lockyer’s legislative gamesmanship does not serve the best interests of all Californians.