REFORMERS' OBJECTIVITY CALLED INTO QUESTION

SACRAMENTO - To fix California's strife-ridden prisons, Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger has turned to some longtime correctional officials who
helped create the very system he has vowed to change.

The would-be reformers include two advisers who have been criticized
for their handling of violent prison incidents, one who relies on
prison officials to pay him for consulting work and a fourth who has
strong ties to the politically powerful correctional officers union.

``The people who built the system up are part and parcel of the
problem,'' said James Esten, a consultant and former Department of
Corrections administrator. If change is what the governor wants, he
added, ``You need new, outside blood.''

Schwarzenegger hailed his prison advisers as experts on the state's
prisons. ``The team that I have around me,'' he said recently, ``are
really the best and the brightest in the field.''

The governor's advisers include:

* Roderick Q. Hickman, Cabinet secretary for the Youth and Adult
Correctional Agency. Hickman, a former deputy director of the
Department of Corrections, was faulted by a Folsom Prison
administrator for failing to quickly investigate a 2002 riot.

* James Gomez, a Schwarzenegger transition team adviser on prisons. He
was director of corrections in the 1990s when shootings of unarmed
inmates escalated to unprecedented levels and was accused of hampering
probes of the incidents.

* Robin Dezember, a consultant to Schwarzenegger's prison-reform
commission. A former deputy director of the Department of Corrections,
Dezember since 2001 has received almost $600,000 in no-bid contracts
from the department he is now charged with overhauling.

* Tim Virga, Schwarzenegger's chief negotiator with the prison guard
union. Virga, a former correctional counselor, was president of the
Folsom chapter of the politically powerful union, bargained on its
behalf in the mid-1990s and has said he might return to the
corrections department, where he could receive the benefits he negotiates.

Peter Siggins, Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, said the
governor's loose-knit team includes corrections veterans who worked in
the 1990s to make the prisons better, but later watched with dismay as
the system's reputation was tarnished.

``There's a sense of frustration and a feeling they need to restore a
little of the luster to the badge,'' said Siggins, who also has ties
to the prisons as a former deputy attorney general who defended them
against lawsuits in the 1990s. ``The governor has found and selected
people with experience in what is a very complicated endeavor.''

To oversee the state's adult prisons, Schwarzenegger also turned to a
corrections veteran, Jeanne Woodford, a former warden at San Quentin.
But he tapped Walter Allen, a onetime undercover narcotics officer, to
run the state's juvenile detention facilities, making him the most
notable outsider among Schwarzenegger's corrections team.

Critics say Schwarzenegger should recruit more impartial voices.
``They are recycling people born and raised in the system,'' said John
Scott, a San Francisco attorney who sued the department on behalf of
whistle-blowers.

In the 4 1/2 months since Schwarzenegger took office, the California
Youth Authority and the Department of Corrections have been engulfed
in crises.

State-commissioned reports disclosed that California subjects young
inmates to the harshest punishments of any juvenile system in the
nation, including incarcerating offenders in cages. A video released
Thursday showed a guard battering an inmate who had been subdued.

A federal monitor determined the adult prisons shelter brutal guards
with a nearly unbreakable code of silence, enforced by the prison
guard union with the tacit support of department leaders.

Overspending

The prisons also chronically fail to control their spending, with
prison guard overtime costing $388 million in the past four years, 72
percent over budget. With the state facing a $12 billion budget hole,
the corrections department is politically vulnerable.

Schwarzenegger's initial approach to the state's prisons, which came
before the monitor's report was released, was to greatly reduce
oversight of the system, not expand it. In his first major action, the
governor said he would cut back on the independent Inspector General's
Office, a key prison watchdog agency, and place it under the control
of the very agency it was supposed to oversee.

Four weeks later, embarrassed by unflattering publicity, the governor
reversed course, and in March he named Matthew Cate, a deputy attorney
general known for handling corruption cases, as the new inspector general.

The incident left prison critics doubting Schwarzenegger's interest in
reform. Steve White, Cate's predecessor, also questioned Hickman's
credibility because the Cabinet secretary went along with the initial
plan.

``If you're committed to fixing the problem, you don't cut deals like
that,'' White told a legislative hearing in January.

Hickman has become the most high-profile secretary since the job was
created nearly 25 years ago. His allies describe him as a refreshing
choice because he's been in the trenches. He's the first former guard
to ascend to the No. 1 spot.

Dealing with the guard union will be a major test for Hickman. With
the number of inmates growing from 33,000 in 1983 to about 160,000
now, the union's membership and power increased as well. Through
lavish campaign donations, the California Correctional Peace Officers
Association gained access to Sacramento's power brokers and the
ability to influence the selection of wardens.

In his new job, Hickman, who only recently resigned from the guard
union, will be required to crack down on correctional officers. A
federal court monitor recently declared the department has ``lost
control'' of its ability to investigate and discipline guards.

Max Lemon, a former Folsom Prison associate warden, questions whether
Hickman is the right person for that challenge. He contends that in
2002 Hickman, then a top executive at the Department of Corrections,
was among those who played a pivotal role in delaying and narrowing
the scope of an investigation into the role guards played in a riot at
the prison.

``They talk like he's new to the system, but he is the system,'' said
Lemon, now assigned to corrections headquarters. Lemon's complaints
prompted an inspector general's probe of the melee that found
shortcomings in the way the riot was handled. Lemon himself was
accused of using excessive force in the riot when he kicked an inmate
but a review determined his action was appropriate.

Hickman denies foot-dragging over the Folsom riot probe he authorized
and says his role was limited. If investigators had found issues that
required a broadened inquiry, he said, they could have sought it.

Support from governor

Schwarzenegger dismissed the criticism of Hickman. ``He's very
knowledgeable,'' the governor said. ``I wanted to go and get somebody
that has worked his way up the prison system, knows what's going on
inside better than a typical politician.''

It was Gomez who approached Hickman about a job with Schwarzenegger.

Gomez is considered the state's most influential modern-day prison
decision-maker, after former Gov. George Deukmejian, who presided over
a massive expansion of the prison system. Gomez was Deukmejian's chief
deputy director. Later, under Gov. Pete Wilson, he was director of
corrections. His allies -- some of whom are now back in corrections --
describe Gomez as a tough, professional manager who was without peer
when he was in state service.

But, during his tenure, a federal judge ordered the state in 1995 to
end what he called a pattern of brutality and neglect at maximum
security Pelican Bay State Prison.

Later, Gomez was criticized by lawmakers for an out-of-control
department that tolerated officers shooting and, in some cases,
killing unarmed inmates during fights. And he was accused by internal
investigators of hampering examinations of the shootings.

At the time, Gomez said he was unaware of many of the allegations of
brutality and denied that the prisons were out of control.

Gomez volunteered to help Schwarzenegger's transition team. As
Schwarzenegger came to office, Gomez ran names of potential appointees
past legislative aides and was among those who suggested Hickman as
corrections secretary. Administration officials say his role ended
when Schwarzenegger was sworn in.

He declined to comment on his work.

Consulting fees

Dezember, an attorney, was also a top corrections agency official as
the prison build-up began and has been in and out of government
service ever since. He worked for a firm that provided advice on the
prison expansion and later returned to the department as deputy
director for health services before opening his own Sacramento
consulting firm.

Since 2001, Dezember has been awarded about $598,000 in Department of
Corrections consulting contracts. The department confirmed that
Dezember had been awarded contracts without a competitive bidding
process, primarily to help carry out court decrees aimed at improving
health care for inmates.

``I haven't used any connections to win anything,'' Dezember said.
``They thought the expertise I had was necessary.''

Department officials said Dezember was well-qualified to help the
state, a view echoed by a court master in 2002.

In February, Schwarzenegger named Dezember as a consultant to help the
reform panel headed by Deukmejian. Dezember, who is still being paid
for an ongoing state contract, will earn $170 an hour to advise Deukmejian.

Robert Stern, president of the non-profit Center for Governmental
Studies in Los Angeles, questioned whether someone with financial ties
to the department can also be impartial when examining its
shortcomings.

``When you are receiving substantial money and continuation of that
depends on goodwill,'' he asked, ``can you be fair and unbiased when
you are evaluating what's going on there?''

A similar issue came up last month when Virga, Schwarzenegger's prison
labor negotiator, acknowledged that he had served as a bargainer for
the prison guard union.

``There's an ethical problem, and if he was an attorney he couldn't do
it,'' Stern said.

It will be Virga's job to cut labor deals with the guard union, which
has used its political power to win lucrative contracts for its 31,000
members. But Virga has said that he might also return to work for the
corrections department, which could make him eligible for the benefits
he negotiates with the union.

Schwarzenegger's aides say they were aware of Virga's and Dezember's
histories and consider their seasoning an asset.

But consultant Esten wonders why the governor's advisers didn't do
more to fix the system ``when they were part of it.''