Taking the Blinders Off the Politicians

SACRAMENTO â€”  The late, legendary Jesse Unruh used to marvel at how perfectly sensible people would get elected to the Legislature and soon after entering the Capitol think they were invisible.

The “Big Daddy� Speaker of the Assembly--who in later years took a lesser job as state treasurer--enjoyed musing about legislators becoming so pampered and toadied over by lobbyists and underlings that they believed no ordinary folk could see their carryings-on.

Demigods in their own little universe--a few blocks of downtown Sacramento--these lawmakers, Unruh noted, felt they could party and chase women with impunity. Ultimately, some would be arrested for drunk driving or picking up a prostitute, and they’d be dumbfounded.

Some also would sell their votes or other legislative favors and think nobody was watching. Usually nobody was.

However, the FBI began watching in 1986--not the partying and chasing, which had slackened since Unruh’s heyday, but the corruption that had become easier to detect because of modern surveillance tools and disclosure requirements. The FBI watched a lot of people--legislators, lobbyists and staffers--including Sen. Frank Hill (R-Whittier).

A hidden camera recorded Hill in a hotel room taking a $2,500 check and putting it in his pocket. It was handed to him by an undercover agent posing as a Southern businessman trying to get a bill passed. Hill told the jury that the money was an “honorarium� for “upholding my end of the bargain . . . spending time with him.� The prosecutor said it was a payoff for agreeing to lobby Gov. George Deukmejian on the bill.

The jury quickly agreed with the prosecutor and on June 16 convicted Hill of three felonies. That ended an eight-year FBI probe of Capitol corruption. The conviction score: Feds 14, Pols 0.

Hill and the others weren’t as invisible as they thought.

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Politicians who think they’re invisible wear blinders that make them oblivious to the real world. That’s ironic, given their talent for gauging public sentiment on issues--reading all those polls and keeping their fingers to the wind. When it comes to themselves, however, they have a blind spot.

For years, legislators told themselves that if they adhered to certain subtleties--speaking a political tongue of nuances that relied on body language--they’d stay within the law. Bribery was virtually impossible to prove, they believed.

Wrong. Those were hanging juries at the federal courthouse, buying none of the defendants’ rationalizations. They’re politicians; they took the money and put it in their pockets. Case closed.

In the Capitol, the legislators who think they’re invisible now are stunned. The public is a lynch mob, they complain. The judicial system is out of control. No politician is safe.

They’re hunkering around Hill, immobilized.

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If Hill were a statewide official, he’d have been stripped of his office after the verdict was read. There is no such penalty for legislators.

The convicted senator is being nudged to leave office, but has indicated that he won’t until sentencing--scheduled for Sept. 12--or perhaps not until appeals are exhausted. He could be expelled by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, but that hasn’t happened in 89 years.

Hill has evoked more sympathy than three previous senators who were convicted. That’s because he’s a mainstream legislator, a popular, regular guy, not a reputed sleazeball like the others.

Many legislators can see themselves in Hill’s place. They also took honorariums--some of them ethically dubious--before these income supplements from special interests were banned in response to the FBI probe.

Now we have another case of fancied invisibility.

The Senate has removed Hill from all committees. And Hill has volunteered not to cast any floor votes. He and Senate Leader Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) think voting would be inappropriate for a convicted felon.

So why then is it appropriate for Hill to take the pay and the perks--the $1,000-a-week salary and $101-a-day living allowance? Logically, he should either be allowed to perform a senator’s duties or be expelled. Otherwise, it’s simply welfare for legislators.

Legislators obviously have an easier time cutting welfare for ordinary people than for one of their own.

“It is unconscionable to allow him to remain,� says Sen. Leroy F. Greene (D-Sacramento), chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, who is pushing for Hill’s expulsion. Greene is one who does not think he is invisible and fully understands what the public sees.

Lucky for the Legislature, the radio talk hosts have been focused on O.J. Simpson.