Brown Attacks Funding of No-Fault Ads

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown Friday assailed “grass-roots, nonprofit, do-good organizations,” including the Consumers Union and Latino Issues Forum, for reportedly accepting insurance industry funds to pay for an advertising campaign for the no-fault auto insurance bill now pending in the state Senate.

A Consumers Union official denied, however, that the organization has taken any industry money. And John Gamboa, head of Latino Issues Forum, said the $300,000 in insurer funds his group recently used for no-fault advertising had been paid directly to the advertising agency by the insurers and never came to his group.

Brown, who has long been closely aligned with the California Trial Lawyers Assn. against no-fault, told reporters in Los Angeles:

“If there was anybody in the Legislature doing that and taking a million and a half from a source, he would be indicted, literally indicted.

“But the do-good organizations can get away with it because they aren’t regulated like we are regulated,” the Assembly Speaker said. “It is absolutely the most unseemly thing that’s happened in a long time on any given issue.”

There is nothing illegal in such organizations accepting contributions to advertise in favor or against any piece of legislation.

Gamboa, responding to Brown, said:

“He’s grasping at straws. It’s so absurd. The most important thing we have is our integrity. We have not taken a penny for ourselves. But here’s a man who raised $1.1 million when he was unopposed for election, and he turns around and takes these cheap cuts at us.”

Brown said he believed the advertising campaign, designed to pressure several Democratic legislators to vote for the bill authored by state Sens. Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton) and Frank Hill (R-Whittier), will backfire and that the bill will be defeated.

“The word ought to go forward that it’s not a consumers bill,” the Speaker added. “It is . . . an insurance carriers bill--otherwise they wouldn’t spend that kind of money on (its) behalf.”

Brown’s estimate of $1.5 million in insurer money going to the advertising campaign for the no-fault bill exceeded by $300,000 the $1.2 million insurers this week acknowledged giving the consumer groups.

Robert Gore, spokesman for the Assn. of California Insurance Companies, Friday challenged Brown’s assertion that the no-fault measure is an industry bill.