Davis is loading up Sacramento Gov with appointments.
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October 10, 2003
Schwarzenegger Wants Davis to Stop Filling Posts and Signing Bills
By JOHN M. BRODER NEW YORK TIMES
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 10 — California's governor-elect, Arnold Schwarzenegger, asked Gov. Gray Davis on Thursday to suspend action on all pending bills and to stop appointing judges and members of state boards and commissions.
At a news conference in which he named the director of his transition team and bipartisan 65-member transition advisory panel, Mr. Schwarzenegger said the voters had decided Mr. Davis's fate, and he called on him to live up to his promise to cooperate fully in the transfer of power. Recently, Mr. Davis has filled scores of judgeships and other appointed positions and is acting on hundreds of bills passed in the final days of the legislative session.
Mr. Schwarzenegger also swatted away a question about when he would address accusations of sexual misconduct that arose near the end of the campaign. He said last weekend that he would answer the matter after the election. But on Thursday he dismissed the accusations as "old news" and refused to discuss them further as he strode from the room.
Mr. Schwarzenegger introduced Representative David Dreier, an 11-term Republican member of Congress from the Los Angeles suburb of San Dimas, as the chairman of his transition team.
He also named Donna Arduin, 40, a devotee of supply-side economics who is on leave as Florida's budget director, to audit the state's finances. Ms. Arduin said she would complete her work by mid-January, when the new governor must submit a budget.
Mr. Schwarzenegger, who will be sworn in as soon as the official canvas of votes is completed in a few weeks, acknowledged that Mr. Davis retains the constitutional authority of the governor's office until that day. But he said he would prefer that Mr. Davis refrain from acting on laws and personnel matters.
"He has the right to do so, but I, of course, would like it if he doesn't make any appointments, and I would like it really if he doesn't sign any more bills," Mr. Schwarzenegger said. "But we will be working on that, and I'm absolutely convinced that when the governor says that he wants to have a smooth transition, that we will in fact have a smooth transition."
Steven Maviglio, the governor's press secretary, said that Mr. Davis would continue to exercise all his powers until he left office and suggested that Mr. Schwarzenegger still had some things to learn about how Sacramento operates. About 230 bills were awaiting the governor's action, Mr. Maviglio said, and Mr. Davis was continuing to name judges and other appointed officials.
"Until the secretary of state hands the new governor his election certificate," Mr. Maviglio said, "Governor Davis will continue doing the job the Constitution requires him to do."
He added that the deadline for signature or veto of all pending legislation was Oct. 12 and that if Mr. Davis did not act on the bills, they would automatically become law.
"I don't know if Arnold understands that," Mr. Maviglio said.
He added that former Gov. Pete Wilson made 435 appointments in the two months between Mr. Davis's election to succeed him and his inauguration in January 1999. Mr. Wilson also appointed 31 judges during that period, Mr. Maviglio said.
Mr. Schwarzenegger described his transition advisers as a diverse group representing "the best and the brightest" in California. He said they would guide him on appointments and fiscal and social policy.
The group includes such prominent Democrats as Mayor James K. Hahn of Los Angeles; Mayor Willie L. Brown of San Francisco; Susan Estrich, manager of Michael S. Dukakis's presidential bid in 1988; and Eli Broad, a billionaire philanthropist and one of the Democratic Party's biggest contributors. All of them opposed the recall of Governor Davis.
Among the leading Republicans on the list are Bill Simon Jr., whom Mr. Davis defeated last November; former Mayor Richard J. Riordan of Los Angeles; former Governor Wilson; James L. Brulte, the minority leader in the State Senate; Dave Cox, the minority leader in the State Assembly; and Matt Fong, an unsuccessful candidate for United States Senate in 1998.
Mr. Schwarzenegger said there was "no White House connection in our transition team." But one of its members is Gerald Parsky, a top Bush fund-raisers and the White House's point man in California.
The group will do most of its work by e-mail and conference call, a Schwarzenegger aide said. It appears designed to offer the public assurance that the new governor intends to seek advice from a wide range of sources. Many of Mr. Schwarzenegger's top campaign advisers were aides to former Governor Wilson, leading some Democrats to speculate that they would play a large role in the transition and the new government. But Schwarzenegger aides said that only a handful of Wilson veterans would serve.
Mr. Wilson served as co-chairman of Mr. Schwarzenegger's campaign.
Mr. Broad, who contributed $100,000 to Mr. Davis's antirecall committee, said Mr. Dreier had asked him to serve on the transition team. He said he agreed because he believed that Mr. Schwarzenegger was not a rigid ideologue and they shared a common interest in public education and urban redevelopment.
Barry Munitz, who directed the Davis transition in 1998, called the Schwarzenegger team "a symbolic statement of a broad umbrella of opinion, not a functioning, people-finding, agenda-setting transition team." Those jobs will be performed by a much smaller group of close advisers, Mr. Munitz said.
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