The Sad Tale of the Little Bill That Couldn’t

This is about one of those little, obscure, no-brainer bills that potentially benefits half the population and still somehow can’t get passed by the Legislature. Or if it does, it can’t get signed by the governor.

Maybe this year. Maybe, however, that’s again overrating common sense in the Capitol.

It’s a simple bill. It provides for state sponsorship of prostate cancer research--its causes and cures, how to detect and deal with a disease that strikes one in eight men.

There’s precedence for this. The state now is spending $34 million annually on breast cancer programs--including $17 million for research--and Gov. Pete Wilson has proposed increasing that by $6.5 million in the next budget. State taxpayers also are spending $92 million on AIDS programs and Wilson is asking for another $17 million.

Nobody is attacking state funding for breast cancer or AIDS programs. But why not also kick in for some prostate research?

Ironically, the legislator who most frequently has been asking that question is a woman, Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), who chairs the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. And the legislators who have been blocking her efforts are Republican men, whose political base is old white guys.

For the third straight year, the senator has introduced a prostate research bill. She plans to fund it with $18 million.

Here are some other figures: Last year, 317,000 American men learned they had prostate cancer, compared with 184,000 new cases of breast cancer and 72,000 cases of AIDS. Seven times as much federal money was spent on breast cancer research as for prostate study; for AIDS, it was 20 times as much.

“Prostate cancer is just as deserving as AIDS and breast cancer,” Watson says. “We no longer can ignore a cancer condition that impacts men like breast cancer does women. We can do no less for our men than we do for our women.”

Tell that to the Republican men in the Capitol.

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To be fair, some male Republicans have been trying to help Watson. One is Assemblyman Brett Granlund (R-Yucaipa), who last year fought for the bill as chairman of the house Health Committee when Republicans were in control. This year he’s a principal coauthor.

GOP Sen. Bruce McPherson of Santa Cruz also has signed on as a joint author. He promised to push for prostate cancer research during a tight election race last fall.

But basically it has been Republican men who have killed prostate research.

In 1994, then-Assemblyman Stan Statham (R-Chico) authored a bill that contained a 2-cent-per-pack cigarette tax increase to finance research. He modeled the bill after 1993 legislation that had hiked the tobacco tax to pay for breast cancer research. But the Assembly GOP objected to raising the tax again and the bill died.

In 1995, Watson took over the project. Her bill--containing neither a tax increase nor an appropriation--zipped through the Senate and Assembly with virtually no opposition. But Wilson vetoed it, apparently because of some turf obsession. This governor, who normally sides with the private sector, said he rejected the bill because it designated a private, nonprofit foundation as the program administrator. He preferred the University of California, which traditionally handles state-sponsored research.

Last year, Watson obliged by excluding the private foundation and directing the Wilson administration to set up the program. The bill narrowly passed the Senate with a friendly Republican--Sen. David Kelley of Idyllwild--casting the key vote. But in the Assembly it was killed by the GOP-led Appropriations Committee.

Exactly why is a mystery. “We were fine with the bill,” says Jeanne Cain, the governor’s legislative lobbyist. “The next thing we knew the bill was totally gutted.”

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Says Granlund: “There was a war going on between Assembly Republicans and Senate Democrats. I would think that had something to do with it. Around here, you never know for sure. Obviously somebody wanted to settle a score with Diane Watson.”

“I got caught in a cross-fire,” Watson says.

Then-Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) denies it. Through a spokesman, Pringle says the bill was killed because of its potential major cost. Also, other Republicans note, the GOP basically thinks disease research is a federal responsibility.

Then why is there state funding for breast cancer and AIDS? Those lobbying groups are stronger and louder.

As for the GOP, it either has been playing politics or been politically impaired. Maybe both.