Survival Is Name of the Game for Some in Capital

SACRAMENTO —  Cliff Allenby was there in 1963 when Republicans in the state Assembly were held overnight in the lower house chamber until they stopped blocking Democratic Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Sr.’s state budget.

And Allenby was there in 1970 when Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan reversed himself--despite a fierce promise not to--and grudgingly accepted payroll withholding of state income taxes.

Brown and Reagan are long gone from Sacramento, of course. So are the two governors who came afterward and whom Allenby also served--Democrat Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. and Republican George Deukmejian. The fifth, Pete Wilson, is on his way out.

But Allenby, 62, is still on active duty as state director of developmental services for the disabled, his latest of many postings. He probably would sign on with incoming governor Gray Davis if asked, Allenby says.

Allenby is a senior member of a cadre of officials who manage not only to survive from one administration to the next but also seamlessly become part of the new structure.

“Stability is important. Government does not make radical changes very easily. Most changes are incremental, no matter what the candidates say they are going to do,” says Allenby.

These vets started as civil servants and took to heart what Allenby calls the first unofficial rule of such service: “Don’t get your name in the newspaper.”

Among the highest paid bureaucrats in state government, they undercut the popular notion that a new governor of a different political party will sweep out all the remnants of his predecessor’s regime and install his own patronage appointees.

As a group, these respected bureaucrats typically are nonpartisan, cautious, exceptionally low-profile figures whose expertise and institutional knowledge help cement continuity in public services.

They rise through the ranks to high-level management slots. Known as career executives, they are a hybrid who serve on a governor’s administrative team but also retain certain Civil Service protections and can return to their previous jobs.

Some progress even higher, winning political appointments to Civil Service-exempt posts such as department director or chief deputy director. Typically, directors of major departments are paid $111,000 a year; their chief deputies receive $101,600.

In California’s government bureaucracy, one of the most complex anywhere, there are about 180,000 civil servants, about 1,400 career executives and roughly 670 patronage appointees, according to the state Department of Personnel Administration.

Spokeswoman Shirley McCall said the department does not keep records on how many management-level officials survive from the eras of Pat Brown and Ronald Reagan, but estimated that it is “probably only a handful.”

Dario Frommer, the man who screens and recommends possible appointees for Gov.-elect Davis, says Davis especially values expertise. He indicated that some veterans will find employment in the new administration.

“We have found there are a lot of unsung heroes who have functioned through many administrations,” said Frommer. “We are always looking for people who have strong institutional knowledge [and] are not partisan combatants.”

Another veteran, Al Lee, longtime top manager in the Employment Development Department, started under Reagan in 1970 as a welfare analyst. He said holdover officials provide a crucial link between newly appointed policymakers from the outside, who may have no government experience, and the established bureaucracy.

“It takes certain kinds of skills to be able to accomplish things in a bureaucracy,” Lee said. “That’s the experience we bring.”

“I’ve been one of the very fortunate ones. As we’ve gone through the transitions, positions have always been available,” Lee said.

A third long-timer, Douglas Arnold, chief deputy director of developmental services, joined state government as an auditor of prisons and mental hospitals in 1966.

Like Allenby and Lee, Arnold won promotion to high positions in both Democratic and Republican administrations, including appointment by Deukmejian as an interim director of the Department of Mental Health. In interviews, each said their party affiliations had not emerged as an issue as they climbed upward.

“There was never a point when someone sat down and said, ‘Are you a Republican or a Democrat?’ ” said Arnold, a lifelong Republican.

However, Arnold recalled that when he was appointed chief deputy director of developmental services in the Wilson administration, an application form asked him to list his party affiliation.

Allenby is registered to vote but declines to state a party, as does Lee.

Allenby arrived at the state Department of Finance in 1963 as an entry-level administrative trainee. At the time, the elder Brown was governor and fellow Democrat Jesse M. Unruh was speaker of the Assembly.

Eager to get a preview of his new job site, Allenby visited the Capitol the night before he reported to work. What he saw astonished him.

Unruh, in an unusually brutish exercise of power, had ordered that Republicans be kept penned up overnight in the Assembly chamber until they voted on a budget bill. Trash littered the floor, and unshowered and unshaved members tried to nap at their desks or drank untold cups of coffee.

“I wondered what the hell I had just walked into,” Allenby recalled.

Six years later, Allenby, by then a department tax specialist, witnessed Reagan’s historic reversal of his opposition to the payroll withholding of state income taxes.

These days, payroll withholding is about as controversial as brushing one’s teeth. But during his first term, Reagan had insisted that “taxes should hurt” on April 15, the deadline for paying income taxes.

He contended that incrementally withholding state income tax from paychecks would dull the pain.

“My feet are in concrete on my opposition to withholding,” he declared again and again. But when state government faced an especially acute cash flow crisis in 1970, Reagan surrendered.

“That sound you hear is the concrete cracking around my feet,” Reagan said.

It then fell to Allenby and his associates to work out with the Legislature’s Democrats the details of withholding as part of a bigger tax package.

Later, Allenby would become the point man for advancing and defending the state budgets of Democrat Jerry Brown and his successor, Republican Deukmejian.

In 1987, Deukmejian appointed Allenby secretary of Health and Welfare, a Cabinet-level position charged with overseeing 40,000 employees and department budgets totaling $40 billion.

Allenby resigned in 1991 and became a lobbyist for a home builders trade association and later for Los Angeles County. Wilson called him back to duty last year and made him director of the state Department of Developmental Services.

Now, as Davis prepares to take the oath as governor, Allenby, Arnold, Lee and other veterans sprinkled throughout state government are once again examining their resumes.

Lee declined to discuss his employment status. But Arnold admitted to feeling a certain uneasiness.

“I might take a big hit,” Arnold said. “That’s the breaks of the game. You just keep doing the best job you can.”