Democrat declares victory in budget feud with Assembly speaker

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Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Canada Flintridge) is declaring victory in his long-running feud with Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles), trumpeting news Tuesday that his staff will not be furloughed as the speaker had previously threatened.

“I’m ecstatic for my staff and my district,” Portantino said.

In July, Pérez declared Portantino a profligate spender and slashed his office budget, saying he would place Portantino’s staff on unpaid leave beginning this month if the lawmaker did not bring his spending into line. Portantino denied the accusation, alleging that he was being punished for being the only Assembly Democrat to vote against the state budget in June.

So is the feud over? Far from it.

Neither lawmaker can agree on what happened. Pérez’s office said the furloughs aren’t necessary because two of Portantino’s staffers left the lawmaker’s office and two asked for leaves of absence. Pérez spokeswoman Robin Swanson said the “overspending” issue was not resolved “through anything Portantino has done.”

Trent Hager, Portantino’s chief of staff, said one staff member was “taken” from the lawmaker’s district office and transferred to Pérez’s district office while another was transferred to the Assembly Rules Committee. Yet another staffer left for “temporary employment” because of the instability. Hager, reached on by phone, said he requested medical leave because of the stress related to the months-long fight.

Meanwhile, Portantino vowed to press on in his fight for government transparency, calling for the complete disclosure of lawmakers’ office budgets. Several newspapers, including The Times, have gone to court to challenge the Legislature’s refusal to turn over records about how leadership doles out taxpayer resources to the rank and file. The Assembly released partial records in August.

Earlier Tuesday, Portantino ribbed Pérez over a legislative task force the speaker has promised to form to review the Assembly’s open-records policies. “Thus far, there is no evidence that the Task Force has met or is planning on meeting,” he wrote in a letter. “That is, unless the Task Force is meeting without publicly noticing the meetings.”

Swanson, Pérez’s spokeswoman, said the speaker had yet to name the group’s members. The body will meet in the coming months and has until January to deliver its recommendations, she said.

“This is not on Mr. Portantino’s timetable,” she said. “He wasn’t elected speaker of the Assembly. In fact, he ran twice and lost. As much as he would like to be speaker, he’s not.”

--Michael J. Mishak in Sacramento