Budget mess will show Dems value donors over all else

In a recent phone call to a KPBS radio show, Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña, D-San Diego, vowed to do all she could to fix severe problems with the In Home Supportive Services program.

The fast-growing $5.4 billion program paying people to provide in-home care to the ailing is absolutely riddled with fraud, an L.A. Times investigation showed. This is encouraged by the Legislature, which has made it almost impossible to investigate program fraud. This was done at the behest of the Service Employees International Union, which represents the 200,000-plus in-home workers and rakes in tens of millions of dollars from their dues.

I take Saldaña at her word. But the idea that the Democratic-majority Legislature will make a serious effort to target a cash cow of the SEIU – a key source of Democrats' campaign funds – is hard to fathom.

Consider what happened in 2003. Reports exposed how several L.A.-area law firms, especially the Trevor Law Group, had filed thousands of frivolous suits against small businesses such as restaurants, dry cleaners and car repair shops, many run by immigrants or minorities with a poor grasp of English and a lack of awareness of their legal rights. The suits, which were allowed under the state's Unfair Competition Law, would allege minor technical infractions of state law and demand payments from $6,000 to $26,000 to drop the suits.

Attorney General Bill Lockyer denounced the suits as a despicable extortion scheme. L.A.-area Latino Democrats pushed hard for reforms.
But the trial lawyers pushed back. And fearful of offending a key source of Democrats' campaign funds, Democrats didn't just block reform measures. They actually offered a bill that would have exposed the small businesses to even bigger court judgments – in other words, giving the extortionist law firms an even bigger club to threaten business owners.

The Unfair Competition Law only ended up being fixed by a 2004 initiative.

This history offers a big hint at how Dem lawmakers will go about trying to reduce the deficit. They will accept cuts in literally any program before they seriously discomfit trial lawyers or public employee unions.
In good times or bad, you see, donors come first.

Struggling minority business owners? Poor people? The elderly? Tough luck for them. The California Democratic Party doesn't have their back.

Online: To check out Reed's blog, go to opinionblog.uniontrib.com

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