REGULARS

OPINION

Just as his hastily called press conference revealed in June--only hours before nearly 500 bar employees were laid off--the governor's self-fashioned skeletal vision of the State Bar, with an all-appointed political board, ultimately had very little support in the legislature.

The defeat, for the most part, occurred when we lost our employees. I was in the Capitol nearly 30 times over the past 10 months and requested a meeting with the governor almost every trip. I warned his staff and that of Assemblyman Hertzberg, who carried the bill, that an all-appointed board would meet resistance from various factions. I urged both sides to consider an appropriate level of funding for discipline and a governing board that maintained attorney elections as part of the process.

No one listened, and I never had the privilege of meeting with the governor.

Notwithstanding the post-legislative finger-pointing at who was responsible for the failure, the governor's last-minute press release saying he agreed to a final version of the bill was written after the bill had been scuttled. Assemblyman Hertzberg articulated this to the governor over the phone in my presence at least an hour before.

The governor's press release clearly was designed to place responsibility for the failure to obtain funding on others. The night before, I sat in the Capitol and witnessed the governor's top legislative aide reject Assemblyman Hertzberg's last version of his bill. Merits aside, it was doomed that Sunday night--no support from the governor, no support from Senate Republicans and perhaps, as it was rumored, no support from Senate Democrats. At that point, Assembly support was irrelevant.

Not one to throw in the towel or accept failure, I continued to talk to legislators the next day up until the very end at 9:30 p.m. It was not to be. The governor's last-minute interest in the bill came too late.

Notwithstanding the issue of turning the State Bar from a judicial branch agency under the auspices of the Supreme Court into an execu-tive/legislative branch agency with an all-appointed board, criticisms of inadequate funding for lawyer discipline prevailed. The bill would have provided $80 less per member than in 1989, when we had 50,000 fewer lawyers, and $143 less than a few years ago.

The bill lacked or provided insufficient funding for the Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation (JNE), legal services, section administration, minimal lobbying (even with significant restrictions from years past) and the client security fund. The bill had no consensus.

Those last eight days in Sacramento were quite insightful.

They were filled with numerous ups and downs. The end result brought to bear a truly disappointing result.

Ten months of intensive efforts had failed.

Rumors of board members lobbying against versions of the bill were disheartening. Rumors that a candidate running for the board was intensely lobbying against the bill, hoping for its failure, was disturbing.

These efforts, however, had little or no effect. Efforts to address the crisis from the governor and the legislature came too late.

We had the willingness to reform. We demonstrated that willingness since last October.

For our employees, past and present, for the public, for our membership, for our profession, I am truly sorry. The reputation of a profession and a dependent public will suffer.

San Diego attorney Marc Adelman, elected to the board of governors in 1994, steps down this month after his one-year term as president of the State Bar.