35th District Senate seat to 70th District Assemblyman John Campbell.
Plenty of suggestions
land with assemblymen
Campbell, Maddox and their fellow Republicans will have a number
of ideas to consider following last Friday's Santa Ana stop of a GOP
"suggestion box tour" in search of ways to cut government waste. At
least 100 concerned residents showed up for the event, Campbell said.
"Many of [the suggestions] we'd heard before," he said. "Some of
them weren't actually on topic and they weren't money-saving, and
there were some new ones we hadn't heard before, so I think it was
worthwhile."
The regional meetings will wrap up this week, then the ideas will
be compiled and submitted to the governor, Campbell said. He's hoping
residents' suggestions will get more traction than some of the saving
measures he has proposed.
After Schwarzenegger saved about $100,000 and 58,000 pounds of
paper by issuing the state budget on CD-ROM, Campbell tried to follow
that lead by suggesting the 1,200 reports legislators get each year
be delivered the same way. An apparently paper-loving Assembly
committee voted the idea down, however.
"My guess is that some employee union decided that someone might
lose their job if they didn't have to Xerox this stuff," Campbell
said.
His bill that would have cut two of the 14 holidays state
employees enjoy also crashed and burned in a committee last month.
A full crib and a full schedule for congressman
While it's likely he was exhausted from changing diapers, Rep.
Dana Rohrabacher was back at work in Washington on Wednesday with a
full schedule, said Rohrabacher spokesman Aaron Lewis. Rohrabacher
became a father for the first, second and third times when his wife,
Rhonda Carmony, gave birth to triplets -- two daughters and a son --
on April 27.
The representative has some work ahead as well. He's about to
begin round of media appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Los Angeles radio
station KFI-AM and the like to promote his controversial illegal
immigrant reporting bill. It's the bill that reportedly earned
Rohrabacher death threats in January after a New York radio station
discussed the bill and gave out the phone number of the congressman's
Huntington Beach office.
The bill would require hospitals that receive federal funding to
ask patients if they are legal U.S. residents and report any who
aren't in a federal database.
Lewis said the bill is expected to come up for a House vote in the
next two weeks, but it's too early to project the outcome.
"We have no idea how the other members feel about it," Lewis said.
"Honestly, it could go either way."
