The state Legislature is trying to prevent Californians from shopping at Wal-Mart. Whether or not the current offensive succeeds, it provides Californians with a lesson in bad government based on bogus research funded by taxpayers.

Senate Bill 1056, authored by Richard Alarcon, Van Nuys Democrat, would forbid municipalities from approving facilities larger than 130,000 square feet, stocking more than 20,000 items, and with 10 percent of sales for food and related items, without an extensive economic impact report paid for by the applicant.

Though not specifically mentioned, Wal-Mart is the only retailer whose stores qualify for the measure's restrictions. Alarcon calls his bill "good government," even though Gray Davis vetoed a similar measure as anti-competitive, anti-consumer and serving special interests. Van Nuys Democrat Lloyd Levine of the Assembly gave the game away by calling Wal-Mart a "superpredator."

That is a strange description of a successful retailer whose projected 40 "big box" stores would provide many jobs for Californians, discount prices on food and considerable revenues for local government. Hostile legislators, however, are relying not on common sense but on an Aug. 2 study by the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Since Wal-Mart does not, in the Berkeley view, pay enough or provide employees enough benefits, the retailer leaves the state with a tab of some $86 million in health and welfare costs. The study is not only unconvincing but, as Daniel Weintraub of The Sacramento Bee pointed out, it is meaningless. It is based on the false premise that employers have an obligation to provide employees with health care.

A homeowner who hires a gardener, for example, agrees on a price for labor but does not provide health care. Such a transaction, as Weintraub noted, does not place a burden on society and, in fact, boosts the economy. So does Wal-Mart, by any standard.

Since the company is nonunion, however, it can do no right in the eyes of legislators increasingly beholden to big labor. That, along with attorney fees, is the motive for recent class-action suits and efforts by the Legislature to quash Wal-Mart's attempt to expand in California.

The only way Californians' money goes to Wal-Mart is if they choose to spend it there. But California taxpayers have no choice but to fund a union think tank that produced the very study legislators are using to attack Wal-Mart.

The UC Berkeley Labor Center is part of the Institute for Labor and Employment, based at UCLA and UC Berkeley, and which has received $17 million from taxpayers since its inception in July 2000. Defunded by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ILE was restored funding in recent budget negotiations, to the tune of more than $3.8 million a year. The ILE's board is a who's who of highly paid state labor bosses. Its work includes the dissemination of union propaganda and measures in the spirit of SB 1056.

On the scale of values in the California Legislature, what unions want is more important than jobs and low food prices for working Californians. Unions represent only about 14 percent of the work force, down from more than 30 percent during the 1950s and declining everywhere except among public employees.

Here the problem is particularly acute, and legislators have become de facto union reps. Unlike Wal-Mart, these actions do place heavy burdens on California taxpayers.

Legislators recently approved a hefty pension boost for the 3,200-member California Union of Safety Employees. The increase puts milk testers and billboard inspectors on par with police and firefighters and will cost taxpayers more than $200 million over 20 years.

Mandatory union labor drives up the cost of schools and other projects. Since 1989, union activists have even prevented the use of volunteers on public projects. This extreme stance affects those building housing for the poor and locals trying to renovate baseball fields and clean up streams.

Meanwhile, the choice of whether to shop at Wal-Mart should be made by California consumers, not legislators. One hopes that Schwarzenegger will outdo his predecessor in vetoing legislation that is anti-competitive, anti-business, anti-consumer and in the obvious service of special interests.