Squirrelly Days in Sacramento

In a surge of reforming zeal, California's voters last June approved a clean-government referendum known as Proposition Nine, which was as confused in its meaning as it was noble in its intent. A commission is now hard at work trying to figure out what the 20,000-word provision allows and what it forbids. But in the interim, the panel has passed the word that anyone employed by the state government should play it safe and accept no gifts from lobbyists.

Thus Beverlee Manley, an analyst for an assembly committee, does not al low her lobbyist husband to buy her din ner. There is some doubt that Sarah Michael, a consultant for another committee, could legally accept an engagement ring from Bernie Mikell, her boy friend, since he works as a lobbyist for the California Savings and Loan League. The state's assemblymen have sworn off the free orange juice, dough nuts, ice cream and milk that traditionally have been donated by outside interests.

A more baffling problem has been how to sustain the squirrels that frisk and frolic on the capitol lawn in Sacramento. For years, Assemblyman Eu gene Chappie has been feeding the squirrels with samples provided by the Northern California Walnut Growers Association. Daunted by Proposition Nine, Chappie thought at first that he would have to find some walnuts grown on state land to keep the squirrels from becoming a vanishing breed. But then Assemblyman Edwin L. Z'berg won 50 Ibs. of walnuts in a raffle, which he promptly gave to Chappie. Now other assemblymen are anteing up a buck apiece for a nut fund to keep the squirrels gamboling as happily as in the days before Proposition Nine altered the ways and means of everyone's life in Sacramento.

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