Capitol Weekly: Valley lawmakers stand a bit to the right of center

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Capitol Weekly, a Sacramento newspaper specializing in government and politics, recently issued its annual score card of state legislators, and it contains few surprises.

The folks who are elected to head their parties' caucuses come in with the "perfect" liberal or conservative scores.

For example, Dave Cogdill, the Senate Republican leader from Modesto, got a 0, which meant he never differed from the conservative view on the 20 issues used in the ranking. The perfect "liberal" score was 100, and the Democratic leaders got that.

The paper noted that Democratic legislators from the valley tend to be more conservative than their urban counterparts. Cathleen Galgiani, whose 17th District includes all of Merced and parts of Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties, scored 51. You can't get much more middle of the road than that.

The Capitol Weekly scores for our other state representatives:

Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Atwater -- 5

Assemblyman Tom Berryhill, R-Modesto -- 10

Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian, R-Stockton -- 19

Political junkies love rankings such as these. For the rest of us, they're just interesting details.

Two years ago, Denham cast a deciding vote in passage of the state budget, breaking with his fellow Republicans. Last year, he was under enormous pressure to do so again and he refused. The fallout -- he was targeted for a recall, which ultimately proved unsuccessful.

Guess what? This year Denham's name hasn't even come up when pundits talk about which Republicans might be persuaded to support a Democratic budget.

In my Aug. 3 column, I mentioned a Web site, www.stoppoliticalcalls.org, where people can sign up to block robocalls. The Web site is a little confusing and it appears there might be a small membership fee. Not true, according to a representative I contacted Friday. The succinct response: "You register for free. However, if you want to register more than one number, e-mail, and snail mail address, you pay $1.24 a year -- a fee to help operating expenses. Most people like free. We have almost 60,000 members. One percent have paid the fee. 15 percent are in California."

The site was created by a nonprofit, nonpartisan entity called Citizens for Civil Discourse.

Meanwhile, robocalls are illegal in California, and the state Public Utilities Commission says if you are unhappy about getting them, you should complain to your telephone company, providing the name of the person or entity that called and the phone number. On the other hand, it only takes a second to hang up. And finally, sometimes it's just fun to complain, especially about the celebrity calls. The governor has called my house at least twice in the past couple of years. We actually listened to him.

Sly is editor of The Bee's Opinions pages. Contact her at 578-2317 or jsly@modbee.com.