Alarcon, Hahn in Opposite Lanes on Tollbooth Idea

It should surprise no one in car-crazy Los Angeles that one of the newfangled initiatives floated in the mayor’s race is a suggestion that the city plant tollbooths at the city line to pay for road improvements.

State Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar), one of 12 candidates for mayor, mentioned the idea during the recently televised mayoral debate at the Museum of Tolerance. “It’s time that we charge people who come into our city, take our jobs and then leave,” he said.

His suggestion sparked one of the loudest bursts of applause at the event, but drew no response from the other four candidates on the stage.

In an interview last week, Alarcon said charging a toll for motorists on the 5, 10, 14 and 101 freeways at either the county or city line should be explored as a way to deal with decades of neglect of the city’s road and freeway systems.

The idea is not completely new.

The Southern California Assn. of Governments has proposed that two toll lanes be installed on the Ventura Freeway, and others be considered for the Antelope Valley Freeway. But the SCAG proposals have bogged down like a rush-hour commuter on the Pasadena Freeway.

Mayor James K. Hahn, for one, thinks Alarcon’s suggestion is not roadworthy.

“Penalizing workers and businesses and tourists for coming to Los Angeles would devastate our economy,” Hahn said last week. “A better idea would be for Sacramento politicians like Sen. Alarcon to give back the $1.3 billion in transportation funding they raided from Los Angeles County in the last three years.”

Alarcon fired back that Hahn negotiated a deal with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that sanctioned the taking of local funds along with a promise that they be repaid by 2008.

*

Congressman Is Making Politics a Family Affair

Is a political dynasty in the works in San Bernardino County?

So says Rep. Joe Baca (D-San Bernardino), who played a key role in helping his son, Joe Baca Jr., win a vacant state Assembly seat in the San Bernardino area last month.

The younger Baca, 35, lives in Rialto and was a substitute teacher.

Only a few weeks after Joe Baca Jr. was sworn into office, the senior Baca and another son, Jeremy, ran into Maurice Lyons, tribal chairman of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, at an event.

Baca introduced Jeremy to Lyons and unveiled his plans for a dynasty: He said he hopes Joe Baca Jr. will eventually run for the state Senate, allowing Jeremy Baca to fill his brother’s Assembly seat.

“Can you imagine that?” Baca said. “A Baca in Congress, the Assembly and the Senate?”

Jeremy Baca is a 31-year-old employee in the accounting department at Southern California Edison and also lives in Rialto. He said he plans to run for his brother’s Assembly seat in 2006 if his brother runs that year for the Senate.

And that may not be the end of it. He has two younger sisters who may want to run for public office someday, he said.

“It’s seeing how my dad has been an influence on the community and how much he has done for the community that got us interested,” Jeremy Baca said.

*

Legislators Get Quick Look at the Good Life

Newly elected state legislators received an all-too-brief glimpse of the perks of seniority through a mix-up in the assignment of offices at the state Capitol.

In past years, returning members of the Assembly moved into the nicer offices of senior colleagues who were leaving, and the freshmen were then assigned to the “closets,” the smallest offices that were left over, all before the start of the new session, aides said.

This time, those arrangements were delayed, so newly elected legislators were told to temporarily move into the offices of the legislators they were replacing before they were reassigned in a week to the lowly offices saved for newcomers.

For Assemblywoman Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), that meant she briefly was given an office on the sixth floor with half a dozen windows before being sent to an office on the second floor with no windows but one sliding-glass door.

“Hopefully, we can work our way up to having something bigger again,” said Nate Macedon, an aide to Bass.

*

Feinstein Makes Case for Cal to Play in Rose Bowl

The matchup in this year’s Rose Bowl has become a political football of sorts.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has tossed a challenge flag at college football’s Bowl Championship Series, saying she believes the UC Berkeley football team has “earned the right” to play in the Rose Bowl.

The championship was devised to have the top two schools in the country play each other for the national title, and it ranks teams using various polls.

Cal won 10 games and lost only to the No. 1-ranked USC Trojans, Feinstein noted. So she is baffled why the team was denied the opportunity to play the University of Michigan in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day. The University of Texas Longhorns will instead play Michigan in the Rose Bowl.

In making her case, Feinstein pointed out that her complaint comes despite being an alum of Cal’s archrival, Stanford University.

“I know it may surprise some that a proud Stanford alum would speak out on behalf of the Cardinal’s bitter rival, but as a senator representing the entire state of California, I feel it is my obligation to support all of our fine college athletes and to ensure that fairness and good sportsmanship prevails in the competitive arena,” Feinstein said in a statement inserted into the Congressional Record.

*

Points Taken

* Amid complaints that the scheduling of some presidential primaries and caucuses undercuts the importance of others, Art Torres, chairman of the California Democratic Party, has been appointed to a Democratic National Committee panel to review the timing of presidential primaries and caucuses. “I’m tired of Iowa and New Hampshire telling us who our candidate is,” said Torres, who favors a series of regional primaries.

* Former Assemblymen Ken Maddox, who represented central Orange County until leaving office this month, and Dennis Brown, who served from 1978 to 1990 in a Los Alamitos-based district, have applied to become the local legislative analyst for Orange County, working with former Assembly Republican Leader Scott Baugh of Huntington Beach, who is now the county’s lobbyist.

* Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, former U.S. envoy to Iraq and head of the Provisional Authority, is scheduled to appear at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda on Feb. 2 to accept the institution’s Victory of Freedom award at a candlelight dinner in the new reproduction of the White House East Room.

*

You Can Quote Me

“One of you might want to grow up one day and be a journalist, a news journalist. You have to read a lot and then you have to write, and then you have to make sure you don’t marry a governor.”

California First Lady Maria Shriver, addressing students at Washington Elementary School in Sacramento about how her marriage to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger complicated her career as a television journalist.

*

Contributors this week include Times staff writers Hugo Martin and Jean O. Pasco.