Dana Cody, executive director, Life Legal Defense Foundation

Article 16, Section 3, of the California Constitution states:

"No money shall ever be appropriated or drawn from the State Treasury for the purpose or benefit of any corporation, association, asylum, hospital, or any other institution not under the exclusive management and control of the State as a state institution, nor shall any grant or donation of property ever be made thereto by the State…" [bolding added]

The eighth and final section of Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, says:

"The statutory provisions of this measure, except the bond provisions, may be amended to enhance the ability of the institute to further the purposes of the grant and loan program created by the measure, by a bill introduced and passed no earlier than the third full calendar year following adoption, by 70 percent of the membership of both houses of the Legislature and signed by the Governor, provided that at least 14 days prior to passage in each house, copies of the bill in final form shall be made available by the clerk of each house to the public and news media." [bolding added]

Now come People's Advocate and the National Tax Limitation Foundation as petitioners, in a law suit brought by the Life Legal Defense Foundation against the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee (ICOC), its chair and the four statewide California elected officials empowered by Proposition 71 to appoint members to the ICOC (Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, State Treasurer Phil Angelides, and State Controller Steve Westly), in their official capacities, arguing that allowing the ICOC to spend $3 billion in California state money is unconstitutional because the ICOC is "not under the exclusive management and control of the State as a state institution."

The big irony here is that the ICOC and its administrative arm, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), were explicitly and cleverly designed by their creator, Stanford-trained lawyer and real estate developer Robert Klein II, to be outside the control of the state's governmental apparatus, as evidenced in the excerpt from Proposition 71 cited above, prohibiting any legislative changes in the operations of the ICOC for three years following its passage and requiring a difficult-to-achieve 70 percent margin of legislative approval for any subsequent reforms.

Now, apparently, the successful effort by Proposition 71's author and supporters to put the operations of their brainchild outside the reach of state government may be the very thing that renders it inoperative. The ancient Greeks understood this process as involving "hubris" generating "nemesis" leading to "catastrophe." The Bible says "pride goeth before a fall."

The lead attorney on the petitioners' side in this case is Dana Cody, executive director of the Life Legal Defense Foundation.

California Politics Today spoke by phone with Ms. Cody on the afternoon of Friday, February 25, 2005, to discuss the lawsuit (a petition for a writ of mandate) now pending with the California Supreme Court against the ICOC.

You can listen to that conversation by clicking here.

To access the legal documents filed by petitioners in this case, click here.