Valley Interview : A Chastened Alan Robbins Champions Political Reform

For nearly two decades, Alan Robbins served San Fernando Valley constituents in the state Legislature. He later admitted he was also extorting money from lobbyists and former business partners while in office.

So after pleading guilty to racketeering charges in 1991, Robbins began serving time a year later at the federal prison in Lompoc.

Since his release 13 months ago, Robbins has maintained a low profile. He made his first public appearance at a Sacramento City College symposium. The topic? Political corruption. He proposes forming a coalition of nonprofit groups to reform campaign politics in California.

Robbins, 52, who once lived in a million-dollar Encino estate, reflected on his prison experiences during a recent interview from his one-bedroom Westwood apartment:

Question: Do you think about prison a lot?

Answer: I don’t because most of the memories are unpleasant. Being incarcerated is a painful experience for anyone, and for that person’s family. When you’re a former elected official, it’s a little bit worse because everyone who is in the decision-making capacity goes out of their way to keep from treating you in a manner where they could be criticized. When it comes time to pass out job assignments, if they give you anything other than the toughest job assignment, they face the other inmates getting unruly.

Q: What was your job?

A: I spent most of my time working in the boiler room, doing janitorial work, cleaning the boilers. Most of the time when I worked there, I had the worst shift, from 11 p.m to 6 a.m. and it was quite a change in life for me. You get used to a pretty good life when you’re a state senator. The first night I had to get inside a 36-inch-high tube in the boiler and take a brush and scrape off all of the chemical residue that had built up inside--quite an experience. But I understood why the administrative staff was doing that in terms of job assignments.

You get a lot of time to read. I probably read 100 books when I was incarcerated. One of the most meaningful books I read was “The Diary of Anne Frank.” I read it during the period I was in the isolation cell, which is a seven-foot by nine-foot gray cell. It gave me a unique perspective of understanding the kind of struggle that they were going through. It helped me through a few tough days. There were certainly times I needed emotional support. I needed to reach within myself for personal strength. I had to watch out for other inmates.

Q: What did you have to watch out for?

A: Hostility. Most prison inmates regard the government and society as being the enemy. To say there’s a great deal of built-up hatred of government is an understatement. Anyone who is an inmate is, by definition, someone who violated the law, who has had government enter his life, taking him from his family and surroundings and locking him up.

There were inmates who threatened me with bodily harm. Various inmates threatened to forcibly sodomize me. That’s kind of a favorite inmate threat. There were times when inmates got pretty rowdy and started banging and jumping at my bunk. There were some nights when I had to search real hard for the calm to go to sleep with the hope that someone wasn’t going to come try and grab me while I slept, and have what they referred to as a blanket party. That’s when a group of inmates grab an inmate who is asleep, pull his blanket up over him so he can’t see which inmates it is, and beat the hell out of him inside the blanket. Looking back, I’m not sure how I was able to go sleep as easily as I was every night.

Q: Were you ever physically harmed?

A: One inmate banged me against a wall pretty hard. He was kind of a short-fused type who had a history of getting involved in fights while he was incarcerated. He was doing a sentence for selling cocaine, and one of the other inmates who was doing a sentence for selling LSD was egging him on. A few words were exchanged, and he kind of caught me by surprise. He swung at me, and we’re talking about someone who was 6-foot-4, 250 pounds. He hit me in the chest. I went flying against the wall and got my hand cut when I hit the wall.

One of the things that kind of saved me at Lompoc was that there were inmates there from the San Fernando Valley area and they kind of took it on themselves to be around to protect me. There was one situation where one guy made a threat that he was about to do something physical to me, and one of the other inmates stepped in between us, and said, “You’re going to have to swing at me first.” They knew who I was, and if I could help them out on a little matter while I was there, I would. Inmates have hosts of problems. You pick up a bit of experience after 19 years in the Senate, where people need to go if they need to get some problem solved. A lot of the inmates were in pretty tough straits. There was one inmate who sought me out and told me the story of how my office had helped his mother get some problem straightened out relating to her Social Security check when I had been a state senator.

Q: Did anything good come from your experience in prison?

A: Well, there wasn’t anything pleasant that happened, but there was good that happened. In some ways, when I take on a task, I’m even more tenacious than what I used to be. And you learn some things about humanity, and develop an empathy for people who have nothing--that you just don’t realize when you’re a state legislator. There’s a tendency for legislators to get accustomed to usually being in or around the elite of society, and you get a whole different perspective when you’re encamped with a group of people who are working for 6 cents an hour. You see some of those inmates who are trying to save a portion of those 6 cents an hour to send home to the wife and three kids so they can try to have grocery money. You see inmates in visiting area crying because they can’t do anything to support their families.

Q: Do you take full responsibility for what you did or do you blame the system?

A: I take full responsibility. I didn’t have to do anything I did in Sacramento. I played the system well because I was an overachiever, but I didn’t have to play the system. I could have made the decision when I was up there to say it was wrong. I thought, everyone else is doing it, I can do it. And you believe these almost incredible sayings, like “They’re giving me the money, not because they want to influence me, but because they like coming to my fund-raisers. They think my jokes are funny.”

Q: How do we clean up the state Legislature?

A: The formula is pretty easy. Pass political reform, limit campaign contributions, prohibit the role of lobbyists that they currently have in arranging contributions to state legislators, and enact ways to make campaigning less expensive. Until you change that, you’re going to have a situation that exists today where money is pervasive where legislation is concerned.

Q: Do you want to take a leadership role in that effort?

A: I’m not the person to lead it. It would become a distraction to the effort. There is a unique role I can play, and I want to play that role. I’m the only person who can speak out with total honesty and candor to explain what goes on in Sacramento and what needs to be done. I’m not in office anymore. I’m never going to be in office again. I don’t have any fear of criminal prosecution. I’ve been prosecuted. I pled guilty. I paid my price. Mostly anyone in Sacramento would have great hesitancy speaking with that level of candor. I can do that. I want to do that.

Q: What are you doing now?

A: I make my living in real estate management, and the bulk of the money I make goes toward paying the government money owed from the bank loan I had. In just under a year, through the work I’ve been doing, I’ve been able to repay just over $100,000. I owe about $4 million.

I don’t make long-term plans. I didn’t while I was incarcerated. I did not spend time thinking about what I was going to do the day I got out.”