Editorial: Grocery bags get recycled If you've got the money, the candidates are all ears White House 'fall guy' was working with a safety net As state lawmakers last week investigated the Fourth of July massacre at the California Air Resources Board — the firing of its chairman and the resignation under duress of its executive officer — some Democrats sought to portray the affair as a sign of hypocrisy on the part of a governor who professes a commitment to environmental causes. Arnold Schwarzenegger's top staff as the reason for their departures. Democratic Assemblyman Jared Huffman of Marin County, for instance, said the events "paint a fairly ugly picture" of what the governor's aides were up to while Schwarzenegger was "doing a victory lap around the world and posing for photo ops" to promote his image as a warrior in the fight against global warming.
That seems an unfair assessment. To be sure, Schwarzenegger has milked his support for California's landmark global-warming legislation for all the publicity he could generate — lapping up accolades in Europe and Canada, landing on the covers of Time and Newsweek, palling around with Tony Blair. But all the evidence is that his commitment is genuine.
He speaks often and passionately about the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and in January he issued an executive order that launched the state on a bold initiative to dramatically reduce its reliance on carbon-based fuels. The real issue to arise from the ARB affair is not the governor's commitment to the environment, but rather his disdain for public processes. As Catherine Witherspoon, the ousted executive officer, put it: "He's both the best and worst governor we've ever had.
" She praised the governor for taking strong positions, but complained, "He wants to cut deals with stakeholders that are outside of the public eye." The most revealing evidence to arise last week was a voice-mail message from Cabinet Secretary Dan Dunmoyer to ousted board Chairman Robert Sawyer on the morning of a key board meeting. On it, Dunmoyer reviewed the game plan decided upon by the governor's staff and then stated: "That is the direction from the governor's office.
" Sawyer was offended. "I firmly believe in open meetings," he testified. The governor's game plan was for the board to adopt three — and only three — "early action" items to begin the process of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
Sawyer said he didn't like the notion of board members, after listening to public testimony, "having their hands tied" by a predetermined edict from the governor's office. Additional early-action items were proposed and were voted down. For that, Sawyer got the boot.
Trying to shut out the public has been an unfortunate hallmark of the Schwarzenegger administration. Early on, for instance, the governor attempted to thwart the implementation of nurse-to-patient staffing ratios at hospitals by issuing an emergency order to delay it. After the California Nurses Association sued, an astonished judge reprimanded the administration for attempting an end run around the public rule-making process.
Similarly, Schwarzenegger was forced to back down from an emergency regulation — that is, a regulation adopted without public hearings — that sought to change established rules governing lunch breaks for workers. Now, Schwarzenegger is proposing a massive overhaul of the state's healthcare system — but has not allowed his plans to be scrutinized in a public forum. He chose not to put his plan in a bill that would be subject to legislative hearings.
Instead, he opted to let Democratic lawmakers hash out their plan in public. Over the summer, he will negotiate in private with legislative Democrats to come up with a compromise. The administration's aversion to public review is evident even in its handling of the fallout from the ARB affair.
Sawyer testified that aides to the governor, after informing him his appointment had been rescinded, asked that he write a letter of resignation — and then offered "to shred the letter, presumably to keep it out of the public press." When he was asked last week whether he would acquiesce to Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez's request to have his two top aides testify in public, Schwarzenegger replied that Nuñez was always welcome to come down and discuss the matter privately in his cigar-smoking tent. Schwarzenegger, the fellow who bills himself as "the people's governor," needs to learn to trust public processes that, by definition, involve the people — more people than can fit inside that tent of his, and people other than those who have sufficient influence to get an invitation to enter.
— Timm Herdt is chief of The Star's state bureau. His e-mail address is therdt@VenturaCountyStar.com.
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