Weary Legislators Brace for Angry Welcome Home

On the 64th day they rested--briefly.

On the 65th day and thereafter there might be hell to pay. But at least now there’s money to pay it with.

Legislators who stuck it out through the Capitol budget siege are wending their way homeward, sure to get some ear scorching from voters who are appalled at how long it took to get a budget, and who perhaps may be even angrier in a few weeks when they realize what that slash-and-burn budget could mean to them.

“You felt like you’d gone through 60 days of carpet bombing,” said Sen. Frank Hill (R-Whittier), who earlier teamed up with an Assembly Democrat to propose an alternative budget solution. In the end, he voted halfheartedly for the final version, then suggested sardonically, “I think we ought to slink out of town and hope we don’t run into any voters.”

Before week’s end, when most of them had left town, there was a brief, weary time of euphoria in the Capitol, sheer relief at throwing away the stacks of also-ran budget proposals and the stale, gummy pizza boxes--souvenirs of hard work in the small hours. State employees got to show their faces in banks again. And in the moments after the budget passed, aides gathered at the back of the Senate chamber, ripped off the despised beepers many had worn for months, giddily flipped the switches to silent / vibrate mode, and performed an ensemble swan song.

Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita), who is retiring to Morro Bay, “ripped the paintings off his office wall,” said an aide, “emptied his desk and didn’t look back over his shoulder.”

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) showed up Thursday for a news conference with Los Angeles officials about the budget cuts, then promptly went home to get a haircut and become reacquainted with his horses and dogs, which he hadn’t seen for a fortnight.

The Big Three--Gov. Pete Wilson, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), and Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys)--were assessing the damage and advantages among their troops.

Brown, the Beau Brummel of the Bay Area, telegraphed the end of a fatiguing two months when he wore a sport shirt to work Wednesday. Roberti held a news conference to announce an 800 phone line for submitting ideas on cutting government costs--embarrassingly, the last such number they announced happened to belong to a mortgage loan company--and went in for a long-postponed medical checkup.

Wilson, a man who eats light during the day and enjoys a good dinner, could give up the pizza / Chinese / takeout cuisine that had become standard fare these last late nights. Staffers were joining his wife, Gayle--”the key weapon”--to persuade him to take a day off. Wilson still has a bit of work to do--1,100 bills are waiting on his desk for signature or veto; he intends to get them done by the end of September, a rate of more than 40 a day in a seven-day week.

Legislators’ paychecks, which sat in a state vault for weeks, were finally delivered, to the relief of many, including one senator who, according to a colleague, was reduced to soliciting among other legislators to meet an $1,800 child support payment.

Democratic Assemblyman Bob Epple of Cerritos--who was so anxious to get home that he left a pile of dirty laundry in Sacramento--had to laugh when he opened his check Thursday: It was one of the notorious IOUs. (Checks issued now are standard ones. Checks for the legislators’ tax-free $100 per diem allowances, accumulating over all these weeks, haven’t yet been drawn up.)

When they went into this budget session, it was high summer; now fall--and Election Day--aren’t far off.

First-term Garden Grove Assemblyman Tom Umberg, Orange County’s only Democrat in the Legislature, voted against the final budget. He was back in his district office Thursday, cradling the phone receiver against the shoulder of his summer plaid shirt, signing letters to constituents and returning aggrieved calls, knowing full well what the subject would be.

The first was to a chancellor at Rancho Santiago Community College who had moved here from Texas and would have to work under the straitened budget. “You’ve really picked a tough year to come to California,” Umberg said on the phone. “You must feel like you’re at the Alamo.”

The second call, to an Anaheim school superintendent: “Do you have a black armband?” The usually chipper woman wasn’t in the mood. “I feel like I’ve been kicked in the teeth,” she said.

His day would get only tougher, at a meeting with Garden Grove’s city manager, sure to ask about the cuts to local government. Jo Ellen Allen, his Republican opponent in the district whose registration is 53% Democratic and 37% Republican, will be sure to make an issue of the budget too, she said Thursday.

On the other end of the vast urban plain, Cathie Wright, a conservative Simi Valley Republican and a member of the Legislature’s joint Budget Committee, got home Wednesday night and got an earful Thursday, on a KCRW radio call-in show about the budget: Why were programs for the developmentally disabled cut? Why were prison budgets increased when health and welfare was cut?

A caller who said he earns “well over $100,000 a year” said wealthy Californians like him are willing to pay higher taxes “for legitimate purposes.”

“A lot of people like myself are really disgusted that the standards of society overall have declined, especially in the last 15 years, and we’d like to do something about it. I don’t think it’s quite the political hot potato that the right wing would like you to believe. There are a lot of people out there would responsibly act to help their fellow man in this state.”

Wright, who was skeptical, said the caller’s views were “interesting, because every poll that’s been taken up and down this state--whether it be from the so-called wealthy or from the poor--no one wants additional taxes.”

City officials in her district “went crazy” when they first learned that cities would lose $200 million in the budget, she said. But so far, there has been no overwhelming outpouring of calls and letters from angry constituents.

The radio show was it for her. “I’m running in low gear today. I’m tired. Gee, everybody’s run off on vacation, and I’m still here,” she said.

In his Whittier office, Hill, who was on the budget conference committee, was going through several weeks of mail and messages Thursday. He had finally voted for a budget he didn’t much like, in part because of the calls: from the 82-year-old blind woman whose bank, the one she had traded with for 40 years, wouldn’t accept her state IOU; from the 76-year-old woman on Medi-Cal whose pharmacy would give her only half the pills her prescription called for.

“I hate to sound like a liberal but there are people we have to take care of, who can’t speak for themselves,” Hill said. “I’ll cut the crap out of welfare, but talk about aged, blind and disabled--you’ve got a responsibility to take care of them.”

But in Sacramento, Wilson’s staff has spent the last couple of days answering “high-five” calls from voters, a spokesman said: “ ‘Great job . . . you hung in there . . . no taxes . . . hurray . . . we’re proud of ya.’ ”

Behind the double doors of Wilson’s office, they count it a victory. But beyond the bounds of the Capitol, it may play out like a Pyrrhic one, Hill said. “I think the governor is making a big mistake claiming victory. There’s nothing for anybody to be proud about--certainly not the process, and not even the product.”

Epple, who has been walking precincts all along for what he describes as a “tough race” with a Republican candidate who has Wilson’s support, will spend this weekend at “community office hours” in shopping malls and grocery stores to handle the heat.

Umberg will also resume walking precincts and sending out letters to explain just what happened in the last two months. Although the never-ending budget was not first on voters’ list of issues it became more symbolic the longer it went on.

“It adds to the feeling that a lot of politicians are out of touch,” Umberg said.

But if incumbents “demonstrate to the people that sent them to Sacramento that they are truly doing the bidding of the people who sent them, they will be OK.”

Times staff writers Jack Cheevers in the San Fernando Valley and Dave Lesher in Orange County contributed to this story.