Opinion: Arnold makes appointments from D.C.

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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in Washington D.C. today for the inauguration and accompanying festivities, but that didn’t stop him from announcing several lucrative appointments to government jobs. Among the lucky appointees are former Assemblywoman Nicole Parra, a Democrat from Hanford. Parra gets to be director of the Governor’s Regional Development Initiatives under the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency. The pay is $128,124. No Senate confirmation is required.

And that’s a good thing for Parra, whose biggest claim to fame outside her district and Sacramento was that Assembly Speaker Karen Bass took away her Capitol office last August and banished her to a legislative staff building across the street to punish her for failing to vote in favor of a Democratic budget.

That’s the way the game is played in Sacramento. You may be punished by one side for failing to toe the line, but rewarded by someone else, perhaps for your independence, perhaps instead as a way of beckoning others to your fold.

Parra will have to work for her living, but appointees to the Worker’s Compensation Appeals Board and Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board will get $128,109 for sitting in on a few hearings, and Schwarzengger just named termed-out Republican Assembly members Greg Aghazarian of Stockton, George Plescia of La Jolla and Bonnie Garcia of Cathedral City to those posts.

So how should earnest editorial writers react to such shenanigans? We generally deplore the governor for making patronage appointments. But in private conversations in Sacramento, Democrats complain to us all the time that Schwarzenegger doesn’t make enough use of those high-paying plums. If only, we’re told, the governor would promise a few more post-Assembly positions to this Republican member or that one, or maybe a judicial seat to some Republican senator’s brother-in-law, we’d magically have the necessary GOP votes for the budget.

So maybe Garcia got her job for a budget vote last year -- or maybe it was for telling young Repubublicans at a high school in her district in 2006 that she wouldn’t kick Schwarzenegger out of bed, after he called her ‘very hot’; or maybe it was a gesture to some Republican who now is waffling over whether to risk ending his or her political career for agreeing on a budget that would raise taxes. Same for Parra, as a gesture to any Democrat willing to back the governor instead of Bass. Of course, no one ever admits that an appointment was for any reason other than the appointee being the very best person available for the job. So it’s all speculation.

Such patronage appointments are still deplorable. But, whatever, governor. Get us a budget.