George Steffes

Sometimes an old movie line says it best. Such a line came to mind when I read the Assembly speaker's assertion that political money doesn't influence legislative voting. "I know people love to try to create that impression," Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) was quoted as saying in a Times article Sunday about AT&T's wide-ranging lobbying operation. "But the reality is, that's not the way things happen. People give money because of whatever reasons motivate them, and we evaluate legislation regardless.

Sometimes an old movie line says it best. Such a line came to mind when I read the Assembly speaker's assertion that political money doesn't influence legislative voting. "I know people love to try to create that impression," Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) was quoted as saying in a Times article Sunday about AT&T's wide-ranging lobbying operation. "But the reality is, that's not the way things happen. People give money because of whatever reasons motivate them, and we evaluate legislation regardless.

California lobbyists spent more than $33 million to influence the Legislature and state government agencies during the first half of 1986, the state Fair Political Practices Commission reported Thursday. The six-month total was down slightly from the corresponding period of 1985, but was more than three times the approximately $10 million spent in the first half of 1975, the year the commission began monitoring such activities. Big business organizations spent $16.1 million, or 48.8% of the $33.

More than $82.8 million was spent last year to lobby the Legislature and various state agencies, raising the total amount for the 1987-88 legislative session to a record $158.4 million, the Fair Political Practices Commission reported Tuesday. The total was $22.8 million higher than the $135.6 million spent trying to influence votes on bills and administrative decisions during the 1985-86 session, according to the FPPC.

More than $74 million was spent to lobby the Legislature and other state agencies last year, the Fair Political Practices Commission reported on Thursday. The record high one-year amount came from 1,372 business groups, health providers, local governments, labor unions and lawyers, among others, trying to influence decisions affecting their special interests. Most of the expenditures went for salaries and expenses of lobbyists employed to keep track of what is going on in the Capitol.

More than $64 million was spent to lobby the Legislature and various state agencies last year, raising the total amount for the 1985-86 legislative session to a record-high $138.5 million, the Fair Political Practices Commission reported Monday. Big business firms as a category spent the most, with $31,654,150 or 49.3% of the total. Health care-related groups followed, with $7,019,130 or 10.9% of the total. The biggest individual spender was Western Oil and Gas Assn. with $1,525,561.

Next week, Californians begin paying more for newspapers and magazines. And if Gov. Pete Wilson has his way, they also may be paying a few extra dollars each month for cable TV service. California's wealthy media industries are facing new taxes to help close the state's $14.3-billion budget deficit. And not surprisingly, this has provoked howls of protest from the affected industries, several of which historically have had an exemption from sales tax.

Call me the skunk at the picnic, but as conservatives celebrate Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday, I'll remind them that their icon often governed as a moderate. Reagan talked like an unbending small-government ideologue, but in Sacramento and Washington he acted as a flexible whatever-size-fits pragmatist. Those types of Republicans are in very short supply today and don't seem to exist at all in leadership positions. For that reason alone, all of us should be commemorating the centennial of Reagan's birth.

Sacramento This is getting good: The Republican governor and Republican senators throwing knockout punches -- not at Democrats, but at each other. So this must be the meaning of "post-partisanship:" intraparty pummeling. California Republicans "have a long, colorful history of spending down their ammo attacking each other in circular firing squad formation," writes Democratic consultant Jason Kinney in a party blog, the California Majority Report. "And, typically, I find it laugh-out-loud funny."

Not everybody is unhappy about the delay in solving the state budget crisis. For Sacramento lobbyists trying to beat down tax proposals, the longer the impasse lasts, the more time they have to persuade legislators to see things their way. Take lobbyist Dennis H. Mangers of the California Cable Television Assn. Gov. Pete Wilson proposed a 6% tax on cable television and telephone bills to raise $675 million to help balance the budget.