Capitol Alert

One by one, the bills came up.

One by one, they fell short amid a chorus of non-votes.

If, as they say, revenge is best served cold, then Assembly Democrats delivered Sen. Mike Machado, D-Linden, a heaping portion Monday when they put much of his legislative package on ice.

By day's end, six of Machado's bills had been set back or defeated outright.

Though no one would quite come out and say it publicly, the seemingly orchestrated set of moves was retaliation for the deep-sixing of a series of high-profile Assembly Democratic bills in the Senate Banking and Finance Committee a week earlier. Machado chairs that committee.

Caught in the crossfire - in both houses - was a series of mortgage bills that both sides contend would firm up consumer protections and punish bad actors in the lending industry as record numbers of Californians face foreclosures.

"I hate the thought that good bills get killed for political reasons," said Norma Garcia, a lobbyist with Consumers Union. "And that, at the end of the day, consumers walk out of the Capitol with empty hands."

The story begins last Wednesday at Machado's Banking Committee.

The hearing, which lasted into the evening, was rough for Assembly Democrats. Some bills, like Assemblyman Dave Jones' AB 2359, were defeated outright. Others, like Assemblyman Ted Lieu's AB 1830, the cornerstone of the package, were so heavily amended at Machado's urging that consumer groups flipped from sponsoring the bills to dropping support. Lieu's bill had another hearing scheduled at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Garcia said Machado wanted to defer to federal regulations of lenders. "What is the point of having a Senate Banking Committee if all you are going to do is defer to the feds," she said. "You might as well not be here."

The Assembly Democrats were frustrated, even angry. Several declined, through aides, to speak on the record for this story.

The Assembly leadership, after all, had made the mortgage legislation a featured goal of 2008, promising to address the foreclosure crisis in a press event last fall and delivering bills through the lower house by late spring.

The Assembly exacted some revenge on Monday.

During the floor session, two Machado bills were moved off the Assembly consent calendar (though one was at his request, Machado later said).

Then came the late afternoon Assembly Banking and Finance Committee hearing - the counterpart to the panel that Machado chairs in the Senate. The Linden Democrat had four bills slated for the hearing.

Machado presented his first bill, SB 1053, touting its "consumer protections against brokers who put people into bad loans." Supporters lined up. No opposition testified. There were no questions.

"Is there a motion?" asked Assemblyman Pedro Nava, the committee chair and a Santa Barbara Democrat, followed by 10 long seconds of silence. "Seeing no motion, the bill fails for a lack of a motion, Senator."

One down. The next three (SB 1054, SB 1224 and SB 1286) didn't fare much better, combining to garner a single Democratic vote. All were granted reconsideration.

Asked after the hearing if nonvotes were retaliation, Machado said, "I am not going to lower myself to the pettiness of that."

"I think we presented quality bills that were sound on the problems they were directed at and, just unfortunately, my Democratic colleagues on this side of the house failed to see the merits of the consumer protections," he said.

"I am a senator and I deal with the policy merits," Machado added.

Nava hinted that blocking the bills would reopen negotiations on legislation Machado stopped last week. "There are a number of bills that are in the other house and perhaps now we'll have an opportunity to take a look at this whole issue of the mortgage finance crisis in a bigger picture," Nava said.

"It is not unusual at this point in the session for a different perspective to come into play that may be even broader than what we've been working on so far," said Nava. "So I see it as an opportunity."

Garcia, the consumer lobbyist, said with record numbers of foreclosures, "the good consumer bills are being gutted, stripped and killed. There's no justification for that."

Nava predicted Monday's votes would not be the end of the story.

"Listen," he said, "with this budget issue, we're not going anywhere."

The Bee's Jim Sanders contributed to this report.

Photo credits: Mel Evans/Associated Press file, March 2008, and Randy Pench/rpench@sacbee.com, Bee file, March 2007