Behind the Demise of the Clinics

Underneath the hot rhetoric of politics, the reality of events is often far different than the public perception.

An example: Parsimonious Gov. George Deukmejian and his conservative ideology are blamed for closing many of the state’s family planning clinics, including 17 in Los Angeles County.

Actually, it wasn’t so much his ideology or tight spending that was responsible, but the frantic dealing that goes on in the last days of a legislative session.

The clinics got caught up with an unrelated issue: Deukmejian’s proposal to allow prison inmates to work for private firms. When a 2 a.m. negotiating session to salvage the prison proposal collapsed in Assembly Speaker Willie Brown’s conference room, the family planning funds went down too.

Before the closures, there were 80 of the clinics in Los Angeles County, serving about 150,000 women too poor to afford a private doctor. Now, there are 63, serving about a third fewer women. The clinics provide gynecological services, including the distribution of contraceptives, and prenatal care and pregnancy counseling.

The jockeying over funds began in January, when Deukmejian submitted his proposed state budget to the Legislature.

The budget came down hard on the clinics--an attempt by Deukmejian to force spending concessions elsewhere from the majority Democrats. As the budget moved through the Legislature, the Democrats countered by appropriating $36 million for the clinics. But Deukmejian had the last word, and he vetoed all but $12 million of that.

The issue did not die. After the veto, Democrats in the Assembly tried to persuade the Republican governor to restore the funds. As this effort unfolded, it turned out that the fate of the clinics would depend, to a surprising extent, on a pet project of Deukmejian’s that had nothing at all to do with the dispute over family planning.

The pet project was a proposal to repeal an 1870s constitutional ban on state prison inmates doing work for private industry. When Deukmejian offered it in January in his State of the State speech, he drew immediate opposition from organized labor, which has great influence among legislative Democrats.

As the prison measure began its journey through the Legislature, the governor gained an unexpected ally--Assemblyman Terry Friedman, a Democrat from West Los Angeles.

Friedman is a short, bouncy, enthusiastic man who came up through the Westside’s Berman-Waxman political organization. Like many of the Berman-Waxman lawmakers, he’s a liberal who likes to deal. And, with a constituency that is fairly affluent and loyal to him, Friedman could afford to defy labor.

At first, Friedman wrote off the prison proposal as right-wing doctrine. But he changed his mind after hearing two former California Youth Authority inmates testify in a committee. They told how a similar program in the CYA--unaffected by the ban--had taught them job skills.

When the Deukmejian Administration said it would accept some changes proposed by Friedman, he said he would vote for the proposal.

The family planning and prison issues became linked in mid-September as the Legislature approached adjournment.

A Deukmejian aide told Friedman that if the Assembly Democrats were flexible on the prison issue, the governor would be flexible on restoration of the family planning funds.

Friedman said he would try to put it together.

At 2 a.m., on the last day of the legislative session, Friedman and Democratic Assemblywoman Maxine Waters of Los Angeles attended a meeting of Democratic leaders and Deukmejian representatives in Speaker Brown’s conference room. Also in the room was John Henning, who heads the California Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. Henning had been invited by the Democratic leaders because prisons, workmen’s compensation and other issues of importance to the AFL-CIO were on the table.

Everyone was exhausted. Other complicated issues were before the group. Still, Waters and Friedman tried to arrange some sort of family planning-for-prisons trade.

But Henning, in the rolling, old-fashioned oratorical tones that he uses even in small meetings, refused to go along. The negotiations collapsed.

With that, Deukmejian dropped his offer to give more money to the clinics.

Is the issue dead? Not at all. The stage is set for a resumption of the fight when the Legislature convenes in January. Friedman’s experience shows that the outcome this time may be different. Deukmejian turned out to be neither an ideologue nor a penny pincher on this particular issue. Instead, he appears to be a man willing to make a deal.