Senate Budget Plan $900 Million More Than Deukmejian’s

A fiscal committee approved and sent to the full Senate on Monday a preliminary version of a new state budget that would increase Gov. George Deukmejian’s proposed $33.7-billion spending plan by more than $900 million.

“We’ve got to do more trimming,” said Sen. Alfred E. Alquist (D-San Jose), chairman of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, which passed the proposed 1985-86 budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 on a unanimous vote.

Monday’s vote is the first in a series of legislative actions needed to assure compliance with the June 15 constitutional deadline for submitting a new state budget to the governor.

A floor vote in the Senate is scheduled Friday. The Assembly Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to finish work on its own version of the budget Wednesday and also is shooting for a vote Friday by the full house.

Differences between the rival versions will be resolved by a six-member Assembly-Senate conference committee.

At this point, the Senate’s version of the budget would authorize nearly $300 million more spending than a preliminary draft of the budget that will be voted on Wednesday by the Assembly committee.

In addition to proposing $900 million in spending increases, the Senate committee-approved document would leave the state with a $350-million budget reserve. Deukmejian has said his top budget priority is maintaining a $1-billion reserve.

Alquist said he would like to restore money to the budget reserve later on.

“I’d like to restore at least $1 billion to the reserve. Given the budget augmentations made so far and the appropriation bills moving through the Senate, we’d be $2 billion over the governor’s budget,” Alquist said.

The committee added $95 million to the budget to boost state employee salaries by 8.5%; the governor had recommended a 6.5% increase. Last year, Deukmejian vetoed a similar move to increase salaries over the amount he recommended.

In addition, the committee’s version of the budget includes $67 million in additional funds to close the pay gap that exists between jobs held primarily by women and those dominated by men.

The committee voted 6 to 5 to scale back a subcommittee spending plan for community colleges.

A budget subcommittee had recommended a $185-million increase for community colleges above the amount proposed by Deukmejian, claiming the two-year schools have been seriously underfinanced in recent budgets.

But Senate Republican Leader James W. Nielsen of Woodland said the GOP would not accept that much of an increase.

A Nielsen amendment calls for a $72.2-million increase. Nielsen said Deukmejian had not agreed to even that amount, but the lawmaker argued that the lower figure was something that could be “reasonable and palatable” to all parties.

Nielsen predicted failure for any efforts “to jam something larger than that.”

On top of proposals for state employee pay raises and community colleges, the committee-approved budget contains millions in additional spending on expanded child care, mental health, housing and toxic waste cleanup programs, among other things.

The budget, in that it represents a much higher level of state spending than the governor has said he will accept, closely resembles the first two budgets given Deukmejian by the Legislature. He vetoed about $2 billion in spending from those two budgets.

Before the vote, the committee rejected Deukmejian’s plan for spending an unexpected surplus in state revenues. But the action appeared more symbolic than real. Many of the items in Deukmejian’s spending proposal had been incorporated into the budget version approved by the Senate committee or are contained in legislation moving separately through the Legislature.