COMMENTARY
June 30, 1995
Education summit was waste of taxpayers' money

In February 1994, the once-and-seemingly-forever Speaker of the California Assembly staged a splashy two-day gabfest in San Francisco that he called an "education summit."
     Given the extraordinary depth of public concern about the schools, the summit attracted a great deal of attention, but when it was all over, results were hard to find.
     That's probably a blessing, given the predictable agenda brought to the summit by so many of the participants. Three months later, a report issued by Speaker Willie Brown's office listed more than 30 recommendations for improvement, mostly based on the assumption that what schools need is more state money and more state bureaucracy.
     Even at the time, Brown had trouble coming up with convincing praise for his creation.
     "If this summit did nothing else," he said, "it raised the visibility of the education issue."
    However, thanks to a Sacramento magazine called "Inside California," we now know at least one other thing the summit did.
It cost a heck of a lot of money. The magazine, published by
Joseph Farah, follows state politics, and finally got tired of waiting for an accounting of the summit's finances. In January, it filed a complaint in Sacramento County Superior Court against Brown and the Assembly Rules Committee. In April, the magazine received the first fruits: a partial list of contributors. But it wasn't until May that the Legislative Counsel turned over "a stack of hotel bills, invoices and receipts (in no particular order)."
    The magazine's staff came up with the astonishing total of $353,352 for the two-day conference, and it published the details in its June cover story.
    The bill from the hotel, the Westin St. Francis, came to $105,362, which included $25,000 for rooms, $8,000 for parking and miscellaneous services and $73,000 for banquets. Communication is important in the information age, so there was also a $54,000 bill from Pacific Bell, $152,000 for audio-visual services and a raft of smaller expenses for items such as cellular phones and camera technicians.
     I've worked at organizing conventions, and I know how fast the bills mount up, especially for incidentals. Still, renting 145 chairs for $4,300 seems a bit steep. Don't convention hotels have chairs?
    The Rules Committee also provided information on private fund. raising. Reimbursements of just $86,000 in private contributions were deposited into the Assembly's operating fund, leaving the taxpayers to ante up the balance, $267,000.
    At least. Given the general disorganization that seems to have prevailed, who's to know whether these are all the bills there were? Or where in the Assembly's budget to look for them?
    "Under what budget line-item is this money appropriated?" asked Mike Antonucci, managing editor of Inside California. "Other? Miscellaneous? Unexpected Summits?"
     Just exactly where the money was to come from seems to depend on when you ask. At the conclusion of the summit, Brown told the Los Angeles Times that he expected corporate donors to pay most of the bills, then estimated at $200,000, and that the balance, if any, would be paid from his campaign funds.
    By March 1994, according to a press release from the Speaker's ofrice, the Assembly had received $138,000 in private contributions to cover partial costs for the summit, and the state had paid expenses of $112,600.
    In several cases, the magazine reported in its May issue, the amounts listed in the press release don't agree with the deposits to the Assembly's account (necessarily, since there's a $52,000 discrepancy between the two totals).
    Among the donations claimed in the press release that are not otherwise documented are $5,000 from Hewlett-Packard, $7,000 from California Cable TV and $I5,000 from the California Manufacturers Asso-
ciation. Other contributions were apparently made, but in amounts dif£erent from those listed. In-kind contributions aren't accounted for at all, and most revealingly there is no mention of any contribution from the most likely source, the teachers' union.
    The March 1994 report was the last word from the Speaker's office until the magazine started demanding answers. Now the story has changed again. In its July issue the magazine reports that Brown told the new Assembly Speaker, nominal Republican Doris Allen, "The 'special interests' paid for all my great summits. None of the money came from the government."
    I'm not thrilled by the idea that California taxpayers paid for all this blather, but the alternative of private gifts from special interests -- especially when they don't seem to have been reported as the law requires is not my idea of good government either.
    No prizes for guessing which "special interests" might have been
involved in the education summit. That's too easy. But the details are worth more attention than they've received to date.
    Aleita Huguenin, who manages the lobbying division of the California Teachers Association, occupied Room 833 during the summit. The cost of her room wasn't charged to the Assembly, but room service was, and she managed to run up roomservice charges of $1,016 on Feb. 15, including $532 after 11 p.m. So far, Inside California hasn't been able to determine who ultimately paid for all this generous hospitalily.
    Under the Political Reform Act, jurisdiction over contributions by "special interests" rests with the Fair Political Practices Commission. Antonucci said the magazine filed a complaint with the commission in May, and has turned over copies of its documentation.
    Seems to me the commission shouldn't be waiting for a little Sacramento magazine to be doing its job.