Analysis : Detente in Sacramento to Be Tested : State Budget Fight May Get Rough

When Republican Gov. George Deukmejian and Democratic leaders in the Legislature exchanged olive branches early this year, state Treasurer Jesse M. Unruh, as sage a political observer as there is in California, was moved to say that “in a couple of weeks some people will be back to telling others where they can shove those olive branches.”

It hasn’t quite come to that yet. But the detente that has held for several months now is about to be tested as both the Senate and Assembly move rapidly toward crafting the final version of a 1985-86 state budget, due to be sent to the governor by mid-June.

There was a feeling that civility might be discarded Thursday, when the Assembly debated and passed by a 62-12 vote its version of the spending document, a $35.1-billion plan that exceeds Deukmejian’s initial proposal by $641 million.

GOP Holds Up Vote

Republicans held up a vote for a time while trying to pass a series of amendments unpalatable to Democrats. It was an exercise in futility from the outset, given the Democrats’ 47-33 Assembly majority, but the GOP wanted to seize the opportunity to make its political points.

In the final analysis, however, the Republicans surrendered meekly as each of their amendments, including one to withhold the salaries of Supreme Court justices, was unceremoniously tabled by the majority party.

Friday’s vote in the Senate on its version of the budget was devoid of even that much drama, as the final 36-3 vote indicates.

Rejection Expected

Now, in the complex manner of legislative budget-writing, both the Senate and Assembly versions will be rejected by their opposite numbers next week and submitted the first week in June to a two-house conference committee, where some political eruptions are expected.

The Senate plan exceeds Deukmejian’s proposal by $900 million.

Because the state is enjoying an abundance of riches, until now there have been very few disagreements between the governor, his Republican colleagues in the Legislature and the Democrats. Many elements strongly favored by Democrats, including cost-of-living increases for health, social services and education programs, were included in the Deukmejian budget that he submitted to lawmakers in January.

Deukmejian still insists he wants a $1-billion “prudent reserve” as a hedge against emergencies and, thanks to higher than expected revenues, conceivably can achieve that and have money left over. He wants to use the extra money to retire debts remaining from the fiscal crunch the state found itself in two years ago.

The Assembly budget version allows for most of the reserve fund he wants, but the Senate has pared it way down, and both versions propose that most of the recently discovered revenue windfall be spent on new programs and not to retire debts. Deukmejian already is sharpening his blue pencil.

In the first two budget years of his Administration, the governor sliced $1.3 billion out of the documents sent to him by the Legislature--$937 million for 1983-84 and $371 million for 1984-85. He’s prepared to continue the tradition.

“It’s much easier to simply advocate more spending. . . . We saw that happen in each of the last two years and, unfortunately, it appears to happen again this year,” he said at a Los Angeles press conference earlier this week. “ . . . I fully intend to keep my blue pencils handy and to make sure that we continue to live within our means.”