Acrimony Absent, Assembly OKs $35-Billion Budget Plan

The Assembly, after some carefully staged protest choreography by Republicans, gave strong bipartisan approval Thursday to a proposed $35.1-billion version of Gov. George Deukmejian’s 1985-86 budget that would push state spending up 16% over the current year.

The budget, which would increase spending for the fiscal year beginning July 1 by $641 million over the amount recommended by Deukmejian, was approved 62 to 12.

It now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to be rejected, and sent to a two-house conference committee for reconciliation with an upper house version that the Senate is scheduled to vote on today. The Senate version is about $300 million higher than the Assembly’s.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) moved the vote in his house ahead a day when Republicans told him they would attempt to make a series of amendments.

For a time, it seemed there might be a repeat of events of the last several years, when budget debates were bitter and dragged on for hours. That never developed.

Assembly Republican Leader Pat Nolan of Glendale introduced the first amendment, which called for $614 million of an unusually large state surplus to be spent on an income tax cut.

Majority-party Democrats killed the tax cut amendment--and other GOP-backed proposals that followed--in a series of perfunctory votes.

Other amendments that fell dealt with the state Supreme Court and the death penalty, South Africa, the Commission on the Status of Women and tax policy on individual retirement accounts.

In the end, both Democrats and Republicans had little else to argue about in a budget that would increase spending 16% and still allow for a $900-million reserve. It was one of the easiest budget votes that partisan legislators could remember.

“A good economy helped,” commented Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-San Jose), chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, which produced the Assembly document. “Republicans and Democrats were able to work out problems as they developed.”

Vasconcellos said the budget process this year was more harmonious than at any time he could remember.

Assemblyman William P. Baker (R-Danville), vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said, “We are all together on this budget.” But he warned legislators during the floor discussion that budgets may not always be that easy and that lawmakers were proposing to spend “every dollar that comes in.”

He cautioned that an unexpected downturn in the economy could lead to calls for public employee pay cuts or layoffs.

The Assembly-passed budget would increase spending in most major categories, particularly in health and welfare programs and for community colleges, which would receive a spending increase of $99.5 million above the amount recommended by Deukmejian.

Aid to county programs for the medically indigent would increase by $70 million. Children’s programs, including expansion of child-care programs, would be pushed up another $88 million.

Nearly every category of spending would be increased, except for a few highly controversial cuts.

One of those would slash the budget of the state Commission on the Status of Women by $471,000, eliminating the job of executive director and all but two staff positions.

A proposal to restore most of the money cut from the commission’s budget was part of an amendment introduced by Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley). It was defeated on a partisan vote, with Republicans voting to restore the money and Democrats voting to cut it. The issue centers around Deukmejian appointees to the commission, which traditionally has been dominated by Democrats.

Another of the proposed amendments would have stripped state Supreme Court justices of their salaries if the court did not move on death penalty cases within 90 days of receiving them.

Still another Republican-backed amendment would have included the names of Communist nations along with South Africa in a Democrat-sponsored proposal that would forbid the University of California from hiring construction firms or buying from vendors that do business with South Africa.