California speakership isn't the prize it once was

"Well, why can't you?," I asked her.

She blamed clashing agendas, the influence of powerful business and labor interests, and the culture of Sacramento, where individual goals often trump the state's best interests.

"There are a lot of things that I think are very bizarre," she told me. Like the way legislators compete with one another on similar bills "because everyone wants their name attached to it." As an activist accustomed to coalition-building, "I found that to be really weird," she said.

But in our hour-long talk about Capitol dynamics, Bass mentioned "power" a dozen times. And I found myself wondering how long it takes for Sacramento's dysfunction to infect an activist's heart.

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Bass landed in the hot seat last month for approving raises for Assembly employees. Under public pressure, she withdrew them but defended the raises to me on Friday.

She had already cut $15 million from the Assembly's budget; "cut the staff, increased their workload. . . . They deserved the money," she said. "I thought it was unfair to take their raises back. But I knew it was going to be used in the election, and I didn't want them to be the scapegoats" if the measures didn't pass.

Now, she said, voters "are coming after us with 'Why don't you get rid of your cars, why don't you do this, why don't you do that?. . . . What the members of my caucus feel, and frankly I agree, is that we're never going to be able to give up enough."

Maybe not. We could make legislators work for free and still have a formidable budget problem.

But that's not the point. There's something to be said for symbolism, the notion that we really are all in this together. Voters, too, are struggling to right their personal financial ships.

I've got a stack of bills on my kitchen table that I shuffle through every week, figuring out what to cut, who I can pay and which bill collectors I have to stall.

There is no more home equity line, no more room on the credit card. I blame myself for the fix I'm in, and now I'm forced to sweat through my bad decisions.

I have to make hard choices, knowing my family will suffer the consequences.

And I'm counting on my elected officials to muster the courage to craft a plan that spares the most vulnerable and spreads the pain.

I know this is hard.

"I ran for office so I could protect and expand the very programs that I'm now tearing apart," Bass said. "It's very difficult. And it's a very disappointing thing."

But this is when you need to earn your six-figure salary, state-funded car and $170 daily living allowance.

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sandy.banks@latimes.com