Anti-peripheral canal message delivered in the form of 2,000 postcards

SACRAMENTO - They haven't come together on much lately, but there was one thing Assemblywoman Alyson Huber and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office could agree on Monday: Plastic crates full of postcards are heavy.

The Democratic lawmaker, whose district includes portions of San Joaquin County and the Delta, continued her public protest of Schwarzenegger's support for a peripheral canal with an early morning photo op outside his Capitol office, where she hand-delivered an estimated 2,000 postcards from concerned constituents.

The postage-paid correspondence - detached from anti-canal mailers Huber circulated late last month - came from all over her district spanning San Joaquin, Sacramento, El Dorado and Amador counties.

They carried brief messages and many exclamation points, from "impeach!" and "is he crazy!!" to "this idea is simply ridiculous!"

Huber again chided the governor for his pro-canal comments last week during a visit to Stockton, where the idea of sending water past, rather than through, the Delta has virtually zero support.

"It's a little like wearing a Dodgers jersey to a Giants game," Huber said, echoing an oft-repeated one-liner, on the day Schwarzenegger was set to sign an $11 billion water bond measure that would pay for new dams, groundwater banking, Delta restoration and other water projects if approved by voters next year.

The package of legislation lawmakers passed last week does not authorize a canal but delegates such a decision to a new seven-member council. Four members of that panel would be appointed by the governor. "What it does is it takes that authority out of the hands of the Legislature and puts it in the hands of a bunch of unelected bureaucrats," said Huber, whose bill to put the canal to a statewide vote was killed in the California Assembly last week.

Moments later, Aaron McLear, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger, stepped outside the double doors of the governor's office to take the hefty postal load from Huber, who was straining a bit from the weight. He reiterated Schwarzenegger's canal support and hailed the water package. "The governor's very proud of our historic accomplishment last week," he said.

Then he set down the crate. "I went to the gym this morning," McLear said.

Excerpted from www.recordnet.com