Strange bedfellows? Porn and mainstream interests join to back bill.

Sacramento is a place of unlikely alliances, but the joining of the porn industry, the California Chamber of Commerce, an Inland Empire Democratic assemblyman and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has to rank as one of the odder coalitions.

It's the byproduct of AB 1894, a little-followed measure signed into law by the governor that grants businesses access to computer hard drives and other records that are seized during law enforcement raids.

Sounds innocuous enough. But the bill started out seven years ago as an attempt by the adult entertainment industry to minimize the impact of frequent vice squad raids. An earlier version was vetoed by Gov. Gray Davis in his waning days in office and finally signed by Schwarzenegger after changes were made to appease prosecutors.

"It was a heck of a fascinating coalition and certainly one of the most interesting bills I carried," said John Longville, the termed-out Democratic legislator from Rialto.

AB 1894 is, in fact, a telling case study of how Sacramento works--hundreds of pieces of legislation aimed at a particular constituency and subject to pointed lobbying efforts plow through the process without getting much, if any, attention.

The bill passed both houses of the Legislature twice in two years on unanimous votes--all without a single business willing to testify on the record about the need for the legislation or any data on how many businesses had been impacted by law enforcement seizures of records.

"While it may sound unusual to pass a bill with little discussion of its merits, it's not," said Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in West Los Angeles. "Frequently bills are introduced when one constituent or a personal acquaintance of a legislator complains about something that went wrong. As long as a bill is not strenuously opposed by anybody, then it becomes more of a courtesy vote, which looks like what happened here."

Porn industry beginnings

AB 1894 was the brainchild of Santa Monica attorney Jeffrey Douglas, who says that two of his clients were victimized by records seizures and ultimately forced out of business.

Douglas also happens to chair the Free Speech Coalition, the main lobbying arm for the pornography industry.

"I've represented a number of clients in the adult entertainment industry and in other industries who had records seized but no charges were ever filed," Douglas said. "About half the time, I can get the investigating officer to allow copies of records to be made. But that relies strictly on the courtesy of the officer: there's nothing in the law requiring the officer to do so."

In the two cases where the companies had to shut down--one was a mail-order pornography business, the other a mail-order vitamin firm--investigators held the records for a year and for eight months, respectively, Douglas said.

"I could not challenge the lawfulness of the warrants," he said. "What I suspect is that the investigators were quite happy to put these companies out of business, even though they never filed any charges against either company."

That's what prompted Douglas to bring up the matter before the Free Speech Coalition in hopes of getting a law passed requiring seized records to be copied upon request. The coalition quickly drafted a bill outlining its proposal.

Of course, any bill openly sponsored by the pornography industry becomes an easy target for politicians to score points with social conservatives and law-enforcement types. What the industry needed were mainstream allies.

That's where the industry's Sacramento lobbyist--who goes by the moniker Kat Sunlove--entered the picture.

"The vast majority of companies in the adult entertainment industry are small businesses," said Sunlove, a former dominatrix who used to publish a sex magazine called "Spectator."

"But because of the industry they are in, they are often subject to investigations by prosecutors who love to go after adult material. They are simply businesspeople who are suffering from their inability to get copies of business records during an investigation, even if they are ultimately not charged."

Dead end

Sunlove had initially approached Longville, whom she had known when they were working on Tom Bradley's unsuccessful mayoral effort in 1969. But though Longville--a self-described social liberal with a "libertarian streak"--was sympathetic, he was also realistic that a bill sponsored by the pornography industry would have a tough time.

"I told Kat that the bill didn't stand much of a chance if the only supporters were from the adult entertainment industry," Longville said.

What the bill needed, Longville said, were mainstream allies.

"My first call was to (lobbyist) Julie Broyles at the Chamber of Commerce," Sunlove said. The chamber is a powerful lobbying organization representing hundreds of the state's largest corporations.

Broyles, who had been aware of the bill, became convinced that the state chamber should support it, even though the adult entertainment industry was the chief sponsor. "When you have criminal investigations, that's where law enforcement folks can come in and take everything," Broyles said. "We realized there was absolutely no process in place for a legitimate business to get copies of records to continue to operate."

Broyles said that if a business were to have its computer hard drives seized it might be unable to make payroll payments, fulfill orders or even pay taxes.

With the backing of the chamber, Sunlove was finally able to persuade Longville to carry the bill--AB 1438--at the beginning of the 2003 session.

The main stumbling block was opposition from prosecutors who were concerned that giving businesses the right to have records copied could jeopardize investigations.

"As we got more information, we found out it really was a pornography bill, that companies in the adult entertainment industry were simply trying to get back the pornographic materials that investigators had seized," said Dave LaBahn, executive director of the California District Attorneys Association.

For the most part, LaBahn said, other companies are able to get their records back under current law. It's only when the business itself is a target of an investigation and poses an imminent threat to the public welfare that records are not returned, he said. "Even then, we can't go in and seize the records unless we have a search warrant from a judge," LaBahn said.

The District Attorneys Association argued that the bill was unnecessary, would impose additional copying costs on already strapped law enforcement agencies, and could jeopardize ongoing investigations.

Longville, the Free Speech Coalition and the state chamber agreed to a provision allowing prosecutors or investigators to make their case to a judge that the seized records should be withheld from the business. That mollified prosecutors, though they continued to oppose the legislation.

More than just adult businesses were supposedly affected.

In April 1998, several dozen armed officers seized a dozen file cabinets, more than 100 boxes and files on dozens of computers at the Riverside offices of First American Financial Group, a credit counseling company.

At the time, Deputy District Attorney Vicki Hightower told the Riverside Press-Enterprise that investigators were responding to complaints from customers who said First American was accepting money from them but was not paying the customers' creditors. They were also looking for evidence of embezzlement, grand theft and illegal money transfers.

After two years, four charges were filed against owner Toyin Dawodu and First American Financial, all related to the firm's operating without a license. The case is still pending and has yet to reach trial.

Dawodu said that the raid was prompted by complaints from a competitor and that the seizure of the records effectively put him out of business.

"Virtually everything was taken, so it was impossible to continue daily operations," Dawodu said.

The political process initially seemed to bode well for the bill.

The recall intervened

Normally, getting the signature of a Democratic governor on Democrat-carried legislation that passes unanimously would be no problem. But September of 2003 was hardly a normal time in California, and Longville soon learned that the bill was in serious trouble when it landed on Gray Davis' desk.

First, it was fight in the middle of the chaotic recall campaign, when Davis' regular staff members were scrambling in an attempt to save their boss' job. As a result, the bill was assigned to a temporary employee on loan from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, which had joined the statewide District Attorneys Association in opposing the measure.

To make matters worse, the chamber's support of the bill backfired, Longville said. "The chamber had already endorsed Schwarzenegger for governor, so naturally, Gov. Davis was not exactly disposed to sign the bill," Longville said.

Davis vetoed the bill on Oct. 14, seven days after California voters recalled him from office.

The governor said there was "no substantive documentation that legitimate businesses are being put out of business because they cannot obtain copies of seized records." Davis also said that the five-day time frame for investigators and prosecutors to make copies or return seized documents or files was too short and would impose too high a cost on financially strapped law enforcement agencies.

Finally, Davis said, "the immediate return of seized documents will almost always tip off a target of an investigation, during a time when the investigation is incomplete and the target can still take actions to cover tracks and dissuade witnesses."

Second try

A month later, however, Davis was out of office and the more business-friendly Schwarzenegger was in. Longville decided to resurrect his bill.

"Look, this was a bill that not only passed, it passed unanimously with every legislator who was in each chamber voting for it," he said.

Longville and the bill's supporters decided to make some more changes to the measure, now known as AB 1894. Gone was the provision that law enforcement agencies had to foot the bill: instead, the companies that requested the records would have to pay.

In addition, the deadline for giving copies or returning records to companies was extended from five business days to 10 court days.

Once these changes were made, the state District Attorneys Association removed its opposition and assumed a neutral stance. The association remains skeptical of the bill, and members believe it could be used as a tool to undermine investigations.

With the help of some additional endorsements from the California Retailers Association, the California Apartment Owners Association and corporate defense attorneys, the bill coasted to its second set of unanimous approvals in both the Assembly and the Senate.

This time, the chamber's support played into Schwarzenegger's desire to make California more business-friendly and he signed the bill without comment.

For Douglas, the long and tortuous path to see the law enacted was worth the wait and the effort.

"The outcome of the bill is good: We now have a rapid, streamlined process by which companies can regain access to vital records in a way that doesn't endanger the public or impose unreasonable costs on law enforcement," he said.

As for Longville, who is now in the midst of a heated campaign for San Bernardino County Supervisor, Schwarzenegger's signature allows him to leave the Legislature on a high note.

"It's so ironic. Gray Davis. who was a member of my own party, vetoed so many of my bills last year. So far, this year, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has yet to veto one of my bills. Try to figure that one out."