Persistence Pays Off for Assemblywoman : Legislature: Democrat Jackie Speier has been able to get 53% of her bills signed into law by Gov. Wilson, a feat some Republicans wish they could duplicate.

SACRAMENTO — Jackie Speier, Democratic assemblywoman from Burlingame, is nothing if not persistent and, measured by the yardstick of bills made into law, is also uncommonly successful.

Her legislative batting average in the 1991-92 session was Ruthian. Forty-eight, or 53%, of Speier’s 90 bills were signed into law, an extraordinary number in its own right but even more so considering that many were regarded as significant changes in the law.

More remarkable is that the stern umpire passing judgment was GOP Gov. Pete Wilson, whose ongoing brouhaha with Democrats was a hallmark of the last session.

There is no objective ranking of legislators in the Capitol based on bills becoming law. While one lawmaker may offer a handful of successful yet prosaic bills, another might become mired attempting sweeping change.

But Speier has long been regarded as a particularly active legislator, according to veteran political observers in the Capitol, and her work last session was particularly fruitful in quantity and quality.

Many of her bills signed into law centered on women’s and children’s issues, and some are controversial.

Among them are new laws providing more rights for pregnant women and requiring employers to be more cognizant of sexual harassment, as well as laws closing child support loopholes and establishing a procedure to certify sports memorabilia as authentic. The list goes on and on.

She said her drive to enact major legislation is in part influenced by the 1990 voter-approved Proposition 140, which imposed term limits on state legislators.

“It (Prop. 140)) really changed my focus,” the 42-year-old Speier said in a recent interview, “because I realized that I had a very short period of time left to make any kind of an impact. So I wasn’t interested in carrying legislation that was only going to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.”

Long before she came to the state Capitol, Speier was well-known in Bay Area Democratic political circles. In 1978, she was seriously wounded in the Jonestown massacre in the South American country of Guyana while she was an aide to the late Rep. Leo Ryan (D-San Mateo), who was killed in the attack.

Ryan was there to investigate charges of abuse at the isolated commune operated by the Rev. Jim Jones of San Francisco. An estimated 912 of his followers died in a mass suicide by drinking Fla-Vor-Aide laced with potassium cyanide. Before the suicide, a small group of men from the commune shot Ryan, Speier and others.

She survived by playing dead and still carries two bullets, lodged in her chest and pelvis, that she says help remind her to appreciate the fragility and shortness of life.

Speier ran for Ryan’s congressional seat and lost, but then won two terms on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors before becoming a member of the Assembly seven years ago.

A small, striking woman with dark features, Speier is married to a hospital emergency room physician, Steve Sierra. They have a 4-year-old son, Jackson. She was, in fact, the first assemblywoman to give birth while in office. Speier also has a stepdaughter, Nancy, 28.

Speier is an intense, demanding and persistent lawmaker and has a knack for picking out people-oriented issues that generate publicity. Her credibility in the Capitol, though, is grounded in her ability to transform many of her bills into law.

Speier is a bit puzzled why the governor signed so many of her bills, a feat that some Republican lawmakers would like to duplicate.

“I don’t know why he (Wilson) is so good to me,” she said. “Maybe he is more in tune with many of the issues than we give him credit for. I’ve heard thirdhand that he thinks I am a good legislator.”

Wilson spokesman Franz Wisner said there is no mystery to Speier’s success at the governor’s desk. “They were good bills,” Wisner said. “It has nothing to do with the party or personality of the author.”

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown describes Speier as “extraordinarily talented, one of the most talented members of the house. She is clever, aggressive, creative, has good staff, and has absolutely earned the respect of everybody, particularly me.”

That is quite a compliment coming from somebody who financially supported another handpicked Democratic candidate in an attempt to stop Speier in the primary when she first ran for the Assembly in 1986.

But Speier does not get everything she wants in the capital.

She failed to gain passage of a hotly contested bill last year to make it illegal for doctors to refer patients to outside clinics and laboratories the doctors own or have investments in.

The California Medical Assn., one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Sacramento and one of the most generous when it comes to campaign contributions, helped scuttle her bill, she says.

Some political observers in the Capitol say the medical association also may have had a hand in Speier not getting the chairmanship of the Assembly Health Committee, vacated when former Assemblyman Bruce Bronzan (D-Fresno) quit the Legislature to work for the University of California.

Brown gave the committee chairmanship to Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles). The medical association’s chief lobbyist, Steve Thompson, once served as the Speaker’s top policy adviser.

Speier now says she did not want the chairmanship anyway. She is chairman of the Committee on Consumer Protection, Governmental Efficiency and Economic Development.

A rising star in the Assembly, her political future is uncertain because term limits require that she leave the Assembly by 1996. A bid for a state Senate seat is a possibility.

As for this year, Speier is not resting on her 1991-92 session laurels.

Her legislative agenda includes items such as bills reducing workers’ compensation costs to employers, requiring children to wear life jackets while in boats, making vitamins eligible for purchase with food stamps, prohibiting smoking in state buildings, and protecting consumers against funeral industry rip-offs.

Speier’s Bills

The following is a partial list of bills introduced last session by Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-Burlingame) and signed into law:

* Employers are required to post sexual harassment notices and distribute brochures to female employees to inform them how to file complaints.

* Large companies must reassign pregnant women who ask for less hazardous and strenuous activities, as long as doing so does not disrupt business activities.

* A new charge for vanity license plates has been established, with the fee to be used to help finance child safety programs.

* The state will stop issuing business and professional licenses to parents who are in arrears on child support payments, until they make a commitment to pay restitution.

* Those who sell autographed sports memorabilia for $50 or more must provide a certificate of authenticity to discourage forgery.

* Other laws encourage counties to establish task forces to study violent crimes against women and recommend corrective action, allow taxpayers to check off part of their income tax refund to finance breast cancer research, and set up a state council on business ownership by women.