Sometimes-Rowdy Assembly Keeps Its Cool on Quackenbush

SACRAMENTO —  It is supposed to be the rowdy, raucous lower house of the Legislature; a place where shouting matches and even a few fistfights have been known to erupt.

But the calm, deliberate manner in which the California Assembly conducted investigative hearings last week in the scandal surrounding Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush has won praise on both sides of the political aisle. Among Capitol veterans, who seldom see the Assembly exhibit such decorum, the reaction is something akin to awe.

“It’s the best oversight hearing I’ve ever seen,” said one, “and I’ve been watching this place for 30 years.”

In three days of often explosive testimony heard by the Assembly, not a voice has been raised in anger; not one legislator has stormed out of the fourth-floor meeting room in rage; no fights, or even testy moments, have come between Democrats and Republicans on the committee.

Instead, the audience in Hearing Room 4202, under a giant, smiling portrait of longtime Assembly Speaker Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh, has watched legislators--always careful with their “pleases” and “thank yous”--coolly and methodically interrogate witnesses. The result is a vivid, detailed picture of incompetence, inattentiveness and impropriety at Quackenbush’s Department of Insurance that is unfolding in an atmosphere of utter civility.

At one point, Assemblyman Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks) even offered a cheery “welcome” to a witness who clearly would rather have been anywhere else.

It’s not over yet. The Assembly Insurance Committee has set another hearing for Monday, when both Quackenbush and a former senior deputy, George Grays, are slated to testify.

But Assembly members already are describing the hearings last week as one of the body’s finer moments. Some happily compare the Assembly committee invidiously with that of the more confrontational and combative state Senate Insurance Committee, which also is probing Quackenbush’s actions.

This is a reversal of image for the Assembly, which, historically, has had a well-deserved reputation as the “Animal House” of the Legislature--mostly because it traditionally has attracted the younger, more rambunctious members. By contrast, the Senate has been the more clubby, mature, thoughtful chamber, where personal relationships prevailed over partisanship.

Term limits have changed much of that. Senators who are “termed out” now extend their political careers by moving to the Assembly, and vice versa.

New Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) has seized on the Quackenbush hearings as a way of doing an image remake on his house. Hertzberg said he has allocated more than $200,000 in staff and materials to make the hearings run smoothly. Hertzberg authorized the hiring of former Assistant U.S. Atty. Matt Jacobs as special counsel. A special “war room” was set up in the Legislative Office Building and filled with copying machines and computers to prepare documents. Young staffers work night and day to produce transcripts and pore over testimony for inconsistencies.

Hertzberg also has made it clear that he wants the hearings to be run on a purely bipartisan basis, even taking the unusual step of paying for an outside attorney to advise the Republican committee members. All documents are shared between the two parties, as well as with the public.

Hertzberg sees the hearings as the first test of his effort to increase the oversight role of the Assembly.

“This is all about changing the culture of the house in terms of oversight on departments and how they are doing their jobs, rather than just producing more and more bills,” Hertzberg said. “The goal is to bring dignity and luster back to the lower house.”

Key to the new decorum, observers say, are the personalities of the main legislative actors in the drama, which is being watched with rapt attention on Capitol Television in Sacramento--sometimes at the expense of other duties. In fact, if the state budget is late coming out this year, one reason may be just that distraction.

Presiding over the hearings is Insurance Committee Chairman Jack Scott (D-Altadena), a genteel Southerner and former college president who drips with courtliness and charm. If this were the Watergate era, he could be cast as Sam Ervin.

“He’s Walter Cronkite,” Insurance Committee member Fred Keeley (D-Boulder Creek) said affectionately. “He’s our avuncular, grandfatherly, gray-haired, deep-voiced, thoughtful and careful leader. If we went to Warner Bros. and said ‘Please, oh please, send us someone to chair these hearings,’ they’d send Jack Scott.”

Keeley also has received considerable praise as one of the main interrogators. His calm, methodical, ever polite pressing of witnesses has set the tone of the sessions and won him big fans among those glued to the proceedings.

“He’s my hero,” said an official at the Department of Justice who admits being unable to stop watching.

The other main questioner, Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), is a former labor lawyer and administrative law judge whom Hertzberg put on the Insurance Committee specifically for the Quackenbush hearings.

Republicans on the panel, while markedly different in style, have their own starring roles. Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) is a master phrase-turner, fond of quoting from the Magna Carta and the Federalist Papers. Cox, cut from more practical Republican cloth, has impressed the committee with his clear, precise summaries of complicated testimony.

Even Assemblyman Rico Oller (R-San Andreas), not one of the Legislature’s best known wordsmiths, has occasionally jumped in with a timely observation.

After several witnesses from the Department of Insurance said they had no recollection of key decisions involving Quackenbush, Oller commented incredulously:

“There has been an incredible amount of memory loss here.”

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Times staff writer Carl Ingram contributed to this report.