Assembly Votes to Save Worker Safety Program

SACRAMENTO —  The Assembly voted 48 to 7 to save the state’s $8-million worker safety program from Gov. George Deukmejian’s budget ax Thursday after prosecutors told lawmakers that the spending cut would hamstring criminal prosecutions under California safety laws.

Testifying before the Assembly, which met for the second consecutive day as a “committee of the whole” to discuss the governor’s proposed $39.3-billion budget, prosecutors from New York and Los Angeles said Deukmejian’s budget proposal could preempt tough California job safety laws if it transfers responsibility for the state’s occupational health and safety program (Cal/OSHA) to the federal government.

Deukmejian has proposed the shift as an economy move designed to save $8 million the first year but as much as $50 million over four years. The governor so far has refused to back down from his proposal and has threatened to veto any additional spending that Democrats put in his budget.

Elizabeth Holtzman, a former Democratic congresswoman who now serves as district attorney for Kings County, New York, told Assembly lawmakers that a similar money-saving move by her state several years ago was a mistake.

Holtzman, invited to testify by Assembly Democrats opposed to the governor’s budget plan, said, “When a state opts out of occupational safety and health enforcement, as New York did, local authorities are impotent to protect workers.”

In other testimony, Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Chatten-Brown, head of a worker safety enforcement unit, told lawmakers that California’s tough laws have contributed to a sharp drop in the number of industrial deaths since Cal/OSHA was created in 1973--from 711 fatalities that year to 442 in 1984.

The prosecutor said that federal OSHA laws were not enough.

“Since 1973, there have been 255 prosecutions of workplace violations in California. (Under federal OSHA) there have been 14 nationwide--as many as we have brought in the County of Los Angeles in the last 18 months,” she said.

Chatten-Brown added that no employer prosecuted under the federal statutes went to jail, “while in the County of Los Angeles, we have already placed two employers whose negligence resulted in a death of a worker in jail.”

Traditionally, issues like the governor’s Cal/OSHA cut have been debated before obscure budget subcommittees. But such hearings draw limited news coverage and produce little or no public debate.

Democrats hope that they will attract more news coverage by debating issues like Cal/OSHA before the full 80-member Assembly meeting as a committee of the whole. They also hope that it will help them seize some of the budget-making initiative from Deukmejian by forcing the debate on such emotionally laden issues as health care for the poor and worker safety. Just how successful they will be remains to be seem.

The Cal/OSHA action was in the form of a vote on a budget amendment by Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Hawthorne).

Sat on Sidelines

Republicans, as they did on Wednesday when Democrats won passage of a budget amendment restoring $300 million to the state’s financially ailing Medi-Cal health services program, essentially sat on the sidelines.

Unable to control witnesses or the direction of the debate, Republicans for the most part have been not voting or voting no.

Only six Republicans joined 42 Democrats in voting in favor of restoring the Cal/OSHA cut. All seven “no” votes were cast by GOP lawmakers. Twenty-five Republicans, including GOP Assembly Leader Pat Nolan of Glendale, did not vote. Several GOP lawmakers were reportedly playing cards in a private room just off the Assembly floor.

Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra), a GOP member of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, spoke for his colleagues before the hearing began and denounced the committee of the whole as “a giant press conference staged with taxpayers’ dollars.”

Salvage Programs

Ultimately, Assembly Democrats will need GOP support if they hope to salvage their programs. Senate Democrats pose no problem. They have already amended their version of the budget to add back the Medi-Cal and Cal/OSHA cuts. But Republican support is needed to provide the two-thirds majority vote needed to pass the budget bill, as opposed to the simple majority needed to pass amendments to the budget.

Even if Republican lawmakers do come around, the work of both houses may ultimately be undone by Deukmejian, who will have free rein to veto any program he wants from the budget when the Legislature returns the budget to him sometime in June.

Democratic leaders, as they did on Wednesday, did not invite a Deukmejian Administration official to testify until after the hearing began.

Ron Rinaldi, the director of the Department of Industrial Relations, said he was not asked to testify until 11:15 a.m., with the hearing already under way an hour.

Responding for the governor, Rinaldi said he thought that the federal government could do “an adequate or good job of protecting California workers.”

‘Wide Variety’

“You get a wide variety of views on the federal program. Some people say they are too tough, others say they are not tough enough,” he said.

In addition to Holtzman, Democrats brought officials from Oklahoma and Texas to the Capitol to testify. Both those states, like New York, rely on federal OSHA programs for worker safety. Both officials, Texas state Rep. Lloyd Criss and former Oklahoma Labor Commissioner William Paulk, complained of lax federal enforcement.