Proposition 140

Your editorial (“Slicing at the Heart, Not the Fat,” June 14) will give comfort to Sacramento’s legislative establishment. But it is a slap in the face to the voters who supported Proposition 140.

The electorate supported cuts in legislative staffing for good reason. In the decade prior to Proposition 140, around 1,000 new staffers joined the Legislature. Some staff were involved in the kind of maid-and-butler roles that your reporters have described so vividly (March 15, 1990)--fetching cat food for legislators’ pets, chauffeuring their children to school, etc. Many other staff were hired for purely political reasons. The Capitol is still home to scores of staffers who act as servants to legislators. Why aren’t you asking for Proposition 140’s cuts to be applied to personal and campaign services? Why don’t you question the priorities of a legislative establishment that would think of cutting policy staffs while maintaining political staffs?

The truth is that the threat to cut the policy staffs is little more than a ploy to deceive the public and to bring pressure on the court in the Willie Brown/David Roberti suit against Proposition 140.

A Legislature that would put cuts in policy staffs ahead of cuts in partisan staffs is out of touch with California’s needs and with public opinion. In 1996, when Proposition 140’s term-limit provisions go into effect, we can expect a better sense of public and legislative priorities from new citizen legislators.

PETE SCHABARUM

Co-author of Proposition 140

Los Angeles