Cal/OSHA Not Doing Its Job, Critics Charge : Safety: They question the governor’s commitment to restoring an agency that he largely dismantled.

SACRAMENTO —  Despite a 1988 ballot initiative that restored funding for Cal/OSHA, the state’s workplace safety agency is making 24% fewer inspections than it was three years ago, before Gov. George Deukmejian dismantled much of the program.

Although Cal/OSHA was supposed to return to its previous level of strength by last October, it continues to operate with substantially fewer people than it had before the cuts, according to figures released Wednesday by Cal/OSHA officials at a legislative hearing.

The hearing, called by two Democratic lawmakers highly critical of the agency, drew testimony from numerous labor and workplace safety advocates who accused the Deukmejian Administration of sabotaging Cal/OSHA’s restoration.

Critics said Cal/OSHA has less experienced personnel than it previously had, has failed to draft a formal plan of attacking workplace safety violations and is too timid about stepping into new areas of concern such as the repetitive-stress injuries caused by improper use of video display terminals.

The complaints mirrored those of disgruntled legislators who last year introduced numerous bills to force Cal/OSHA to more aggressively adopt tougher standards.

After several years of reducing Cal/OSHA’s budget, Deukmejian in 1987 eliminated the agency’s budget for private-industry inspections, forcing the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration to assume responsibility. Voters rebuked the governor by passing Proposition 97 the following year.

The Administration’s commitment to restoring Cal/OSHA has been questioned because the governor gave two key jobs to men who signed the sample ballot argument against Proposition 97. One of them, Robert Stranberg, a longtime official in the state Department of Industrial Relations, which oversees Cal/OSHA, was appointed head of Cal/OSHA in mid-1988.

The other, John T. Hay, a former longtime president of the California Chamber of Commerce, was appointed last September to the sole “public representative” seat on the seven-member Cal/OSHA board of standards, which can create or amend state workplace health and safety regulations.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, one of the few prosecutors in the nation with a separate unit that prosecutes work safety violations, said at Wednesday’s hearing that the Administration “seems to be trying to accomplish indirectly what they could not accomplish directly.”

Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), who co-chaired the joint legislative hearing as chairman of the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee, suggested to Stranberg that he could be considered “not even a caretaker (of Cal/OSHA) but a mortician.”

Stranberg, however, said, “We think we’re doing pretty well.”

Stranberg said the rebuilding of the agency, which has a $23-million budget, has been hindered because hundreds of staff members took other jobs after Deukmejian’s budget cuts, and the agency had to move many staff members and files from its San Francisco headquarters after last October’s earthquake.

Figures comparing the fourth quarter of 1986 to the fourth quarter of last year showed that inspections made in response to public complaints are up about 15%, but inspections in response to accidents are down approximately 20% and “discretionary” inspections--visits made to keep tabs on the more dangerous workplaces--have fallen by two-thirds, to 568 from 1,749.