Health, water are on special agenda

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used his executive authority Tuesday to call lawmakers back to work for special sessions on healthcare and water issues, key parts of his policy agenda that remained unresolved as the Legislature prepared to adjourn for the year.

The announcement came as legislators hurried to act on a flood of measures in the final hours of their session. They worked into the night debating bills that would authorize production of industrial hemp in California, give prison guards a back-door pay raise and allow entertainment conglomerate Anschutz Entertainment Group a crack at billions of dollars of housing bond money to build the development it envisions near Staples Center.

At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Schwarzenegger said water and healthcare were “too important to walk away from simply because of a date on the legislative calendar. . . . We owe it to the people of California to finish the job we have started.”

Another of the governor’s priorities, changing how California draws its voting districts, will not be addressed in the two concurrent special sessions, which technically began Tuesday. Schwarzenegger abandoned plans to include the issue after legislative leaders indicated there was little hope of an agreement.

That development could undermine a February ballot measure championed by Democrats that would change the state’s term limits and extend the service of sitting members. Schwarzenegger has repeatedly said he would not support the term limits measure without a deal on redistricting.

On healthcare and water, legislative leaders and staff will begin negotiations with the governor this week as part of the special sessions, and the full Senate and Assembly will return as early as next week.

Progress on Schwarzenegger’s agenda stalled during the summer, as a 51-day budget stalemate brought business at the Capitol to a standstill. On Monday, lawmakers passed a Democratic plan to overhaul the state’s healthcare system, but Schwarzenegger said he would veto it.

The bill would require employers to spend the equivalent of 7.5% of their payroll on healthcare -- an amount the governor says is too high -- or pay into a state fund through which workers could buy insurance.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) said a compromise on healthcare would probably have been reached by now if not for the budget delay.

“I think we would have been in a very different situation,” he said Tuesday at a news conference.

Nuñez and Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland) welcomed news of the special sessions. Republicans had mixed reactions.

“I don’t think healthcare is going to get done,” said Dick Ackerman of Irvine, leader of the Senate’s minority Republicans. “There are too many unanswered questions out there.”

The governor could ultimately work with Democrats, who dominate the Legislature, to push through a healthcare plan without any Republican votes. But voters would probably have to approve any new levies that would pay for such a plan.

The Legislature will also attempt to tackle California’s perennial water troubles. Those problems have been compounded lately by drought and a federal court decision intended to protect native fish that could cost Southern California as much as a third of the water it gets from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The governor and lawmakers hope to negotiate a bond package for the February ballot to finance more waterworks, perhaps including new reservoirs and a canal to draw Sacramento River water more directly to the pumps that send water to Southern California.

Schwarzenegger and many other Republicans have insisted that the state needs new reservoirs, and have floated plans to borrow several billion dollars to create them. Democrats say water conservation and groundwater storage are more cost-effective ways to stretch supply.

Tuesday night, lawmakers were focused on dozens of bills as time ran out and legislators prepared to adjourn several days earlier than scheduled to mark the Jewish new year.

Some of the measures had appeared in writing only in recent days. Watchdog groups are highly critical of such bills -- known as “jam jobs” -- because they do not go through the normal vetting process of months of public hearings.

Among them this year was SB 465, which could allow entertainment conglomerate Anschutz Entertainment Group to benefit from the $2.8-billion affordable-housing bond issue that voters approved last year. The bill would make the Figueroa corridor in downtown Los Angeles, where the firm plans numerous large residential, commercial and entertainment developments, eligible for state public-works funds for street improvements, sidewalks, parks and transit facilities.

Anschutz has donated $50,000 to the effort to put the term limits measure supported by Democrats on the ballot.

Advocates of affordable housing were working to stop the bill Tuesday night. “Nobody has taken a look at the policy implications of this yet,” said Julie Snyder, policy director of the nonprofit Housing California.

Another proposal that popped up at the last minute was a bid by prison guards to get a pay raise, AB 1662.

Increases are typically granted through collective bargaining negotiations with the administration. But those discussions have stalled, so the union was furiously lobbying lawmakers to take the matter into their own hands and grant two raises totaling nearly 10%.

“Is this a horrible policy bill to bring to the floor? Yes,” said the bill’s champion, Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia (R-Cathedral City). But she added, “What about the people that are in Calipatria [State Prison] that have to wear the full bulletproof jumpsuit in 120 degrees? What about the one guard that is watching 250 people in a yard?”

Schwarzenegger said he disapproved of the bill, calling it wrong for the union to go “around the process, directly to the legislators, and during the dark of night.”

Meanwhile, advocates for low-income Californians were resisting a bill by Nuñez that would raise $200 million a year to promote alternative fuels through new fees on cars and boats. They said the bill, AB 118, does not include proper oversight of the state money.

Joe Lyou, executive director of the California Environmental Rights Alliance in El Segundo, said the subsidies could go to large oil companies.

“This is something that got rushed through at the last minute,” he said.

One bill that had made it to the governor’s desk by Tuesday evening, SB 406, is intended to reduce the dropout rate in high schools by prohibiting students from obtaining work permits unless they maintain at least a 2.0, or C, grade point average and an attendance rate of at least 80%.

Lawmakers also sent the governor a bill that would increase benefits for workers suffering from job-related permanent disabilities. Proponents say the measure, SB 936, is needed to raise disability payments that are some of the lowest in the nation.

Most California employers oppose the hike, saying it represents a “rollback” of Schwarzenegger’s 2004 overhaul of the state’s once-costly worker compensation insurance system. The governor has not taken a public stance on the bill but has said repeatedly that he would veto any measure he believed would raise insurance costs for businesses.

The production of industrial hemp would be legalized under a bill passed by the Senate that the Assembly was expected to approve before adjourning. The measure, AB 684, would authorize a five-year pilot program in four counties, with controls to make sure the plants were not used to produce marijuana.

Also Tuesday, the governor signed legislation that would allow the wives or partners of HIV-positive men to conceive so long as “sperm-washing” steps were taken to minimize the infection risk to mother and child. The measure, SB 443 by Sen. Carole Migden (D-San Francisco), changes a law banning the transfer of bodily fluids from HIV-positive donors.

Schwarzenegger also signed SB 353 by Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), which allows judges writing domestic violence restraining orders to forbid alleged abusers to have contact with family pets.

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Times staff writers Marc Lifsher, Patrick McGreevy and Michael Rothfeld contributed to this report.