PUBLIC UNIONS BECOME STATE'S NEW BARONS.

Byline: JILL STEWART 

IF you're following the November special election, you may have noticed that there are three key groups struggling over its outcome. You may not have noticed that there's something deeply wrong with that picture.

One part of the trio is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, channeling the spirit of Hiram Johnson, the reformist governor who freed Sacramento's statehouse from corrupt railroad barons by handing cleanup powers to the voters themselves. Schwarzenegger thinks Sacramento is stinking up the state again, and a lot of us agree.

Another player in the trio is the Democratic power base - legislators who've controlled the California Legislature nearly every year since 1958.

Both of these players were elected by us to make nice and go below the belt and perform all the other dramatics typical of representative government.

It's the third group, which now dominates media coverage as well as this year's fundraising, that doesn't belong at the tippy-top of the debates. The ability of government unions to dominate every major discussion is testimony to the power of their mountains of cold cash.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, members of unions of all types make up only 16.8 percent of California's more than 14 million countable working people. Members of government unions make up an even tinier slice of the 16.8 percent fraction.

Yet government workers, who represent so few of us in California, could spend $100 million or more this year, trying to incinerate Arnold's reforms and possibly blowing all previous spending records in California.

Unions should have their say. But they are using up all available oxygen. In California, nonunion everyday workers make up 83.2 percent of workers. But they don't pay $50 or $100 in monthly dues into a kitty used to spend $100 million on politics.

Voters can only hope that with these 16.8 percenters trying to control the debate, the people elected to represent the broader population will argue vigorously on their behalf.

Which gets us back to Gov. Hiram Johnson. He knew the barons controlled California's politicians, secretly wrote key legislation, and lined their pockets with public money.

Is it so different now?

In the summer of 2002, I looked but could not find any in-depth news stories explaining how demands by public unions were a key factor in huge deficits mounting beneath Gray Davis. Then Davis was re-elected, only to admit a few days later to a deficit of more than $20 billion. Unions had heavily influenced the gross overspending, but few Democratic legislators had the nerve to defy them.

Back in January, when Schwarzenegger announced his major reform effort, he sounded like Hiram. But he wasn't prepared to fight the 16.8 percenters. The unions effectively shouted down Schwarzenegger throughout the spring, and the governor badly stumbled in response.

None of the reforms Schwarzenegger now seeks is earth-shattering, although each is sensible.

He seeks tighter tenure rules, so local school districts can fire incompetent teachers now virtually impossible to fire once granted tenure, which happens after just two short years in California, while teachers are still green.

He wants to end politicians' control over ``safe seats'' that have perverted our elections to the point of irrelevance. Once upon a time, before safe seats, California had pro-business Democrats in the Legislature. Nowadays, unions pour vast funds into primaries to stamp out independent Democrats who don't toe the union line. Safe seats mean safe for union fat cats.

He also wants government unions to get permission from union members before spending their dues on politics they might revile. Last year, the 90,000-member California School Employees Association heavily lobbied the Legislature to preserve a terrible Davis-era law that forces schools to hire union workers for bus driving and other nonclassroom work.

The law siphons $300 million a year from classrooms, according to a coalition of school boards. How many of the 90,000 CSEA workers do not want their dues spent preserving this outrage?

Back in January, Arnold said he sought reform ``because we don't want to feed the monster'' that public unions have become. To pull it off, he'll need to channel Hiram. And that means somehow reaching the 83.2 percent of Californians who pay dearly for the harmful desires of government unions, yet don't even know it.