Passive-aggressive Calif. lawmakers just play to the crowd

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Now that the term-limits scam has blown up in California lawmakers' faces, maybe they should try reforming something that would improve the Legislature.The corrupt system lawmakers use to determine legislative district boundaries has taken the competition out of elections. It's time to fix it. Doing the right thing for once might even divert attention from lawmakers' most recent attempt to manipulate the public's will on term limits.There would be a lot of people who would cheer a good-faith effort to have an independent commission draw the lines of legislative and congressional districts. It would be easy to reform the redistricting system, but legislators, led by the Democrats, don't have it in them to get it done.They aren't honest about their opposition to redistricting reform, so they won't even vote to kill it. They prefer the passive-aggressive route. They'll promise reform and then introduce several competing reform plans. They'll pick them apart, and the next thing you know, the legislative session has ended and nothing has changed.Legislative leaders will hold a news conference to say they tried, but couldn't reach a final agreement to put a redistricting reform measure on the ballot. The truth is, they never intended to fix the problem. They were just playing to the crowd.The biggest abusers are Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata. But they are doing the dirty work for the rest of the Legislature.These guys can get very creative when they want to get something done.Take the state's term-limits law. They don't like it so they got their special-interest pals to put an initiative on Tuesday's ballot that would "modify" term limits. Of course it included a little clause that would let them serve longer, even though they were termed out.This was a very tricky scam, and to make it all work, they had to change the date of California's presidential primary. Sure, it was brazen opportunism, but Nunez, Perata and the rest didn't flinch at costing taxpayers an additional $80 million for the election. They almost got away with the maneuver.But the one thing they couldn't control was the California electorate. They misled and distorted the issue with a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that said they were tightening up term limits. It was a lie.They even got Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to go along with the scam, even after he said he would not support it unless the Legislature also put a redistricting reform measure on the ballot.The outsider who got elected in 2003 to reform Sacramento had become part of the conspiracy to protect the status quo. He even has become pals with Nunez, doing everything he could to keep the Los Angeles Democrat in office.But voters refused to swallow Proposition 93 and all the baloney they were being fed by the Nunez/Perata/Schwarzenegger political operation. The measure to change term limits was soundly defeated on Tuesday.The governor offered this election analysis to the Associated Press after the vote: "I think it's very clear that the people felt the legislators have not performed well enough (to) deserve a change there."Talk about stating the obvious. Pick an issue and the Legislature has ducked it, from health-care reform to fixing the state's prison system. There's a $14 billion budget deficit because the state regularly spends more money than it takes in. By any measurement, this Legislature has been awful.Nunez belatedly admitted that Proposition 93 failed because it was not paired with a redistricting reform proposal. It wasn't like he wasn't warned. Now Nunez's once-promising political career has been shattered. But it was Nunez's own arrogance that got him in this fix.There soon will be new Democratic leaders elected in the Assembly and the Senate. Maybe they will have learned the lessons of this election.Now Nunez, Perata and the other lame ducks have a chance to show they can rise above their political pettiness by putting a balanced redistricting reform measure on the ballot before their terms end.We will learn how serious lawmakers are about winning the public's trust by the seriousness they show in offering a plan that would have an independent commission draw legislative and congressional district lines.If they start making excuses for not fixing redistricting, it will be clear that they are the same old tired politicians who have been running the Legislature for a generation.(Jim Boren is The Fresno Bee's editorial page editor. E-mail him at jboren(at)fresnobee.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)