Deukmejian Sees Tax Rebates if He Is Reelected

Gov. George Deukmejian said Wednesday that if he is reelected there is a “good possibility” Californians will receive a state tax rebate, but he implied that Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley would raise taxes as governor.

“Mayor Bradley has not seen a tax increase that he doesn’t like,” Deukmejian told a press conference.

Deukmejian disputed a prediction on Tuesday by independent Legislative Analyst William G. Hamm that the governor and Legislature will be forced to raise gasoline taxes and motor vehicle registration fees next year in order to finance the California Highway Patrol, Department of Motor Vehicles and road repairs.

“The motoring public is already paying a tremendous amount of money in taxes, both federal and state,” the governor said. “Based upon what I see right now, I don’t see any need for an increase in those fees or taxes.”

During the wide-ranging, 40-minute press conference in the state Capitol, Deukmejian also:

- Reported that 30 California National Guardsmen now are in Honduras on what he characterized as a routine, noncombat training mission. He said he “would have some real concerns” if the guardsmen were in danger of being drawn into the Nicaraguan civil war, which he insisted they are not.

- Said suspected rapists should be tested for AIDS. “I think the victim would want to know as soon as possible” whether the suspect carried the disease, he said, but conceded there “might be a legal question” as to whether somebody could be forced to be tested before being convicted.

Deukmejian, seeking to capitalize on the voters’ perpetual distaste for higher taxes, again is trying to make taxes an issue in his election campaign, as he did when he first ran against Bradley four years ago.

Deukmejian ran on a “no tax” platform in 1982 and has avoided raising what he calls “general taxes,” such as income and sales. But he has hiked several relatively obscure taxes and fees that over a four-year period will force Californians to pay an additional $2.4 billion into the state treasury.

The state government, however, for the first time is starting to bump up against a spending limit imposed by California voters through a 1979 ballot initiative sponsored by anti-tax crusader Paul Gann. The limit is based on inflation and population growth, and any time state revenues exceed the amount that legally can be spent, taxpayers are entitled to a rebate.

“It looks like that might be a good possibility,” Deukmejian said, referring to a tax rebate.

“We’re about $100 million below the Gann (spending) limit (with a proposed $37-billion budget). And if you project out over the next four years as to what normal increases would come in from revenues without any tax increase . . . there’s a possibility we might, you know, reach that Gann limit, in which case we would have to follow the law . . . It (revenues) would have to be returned.”

Last Saturday, in a political speech to the California Republican Assembly in Fresno, Deukmejian said “every concerned taxpayer” should be worried that Bradley, as governor, might try to change the Gann spending limit so he could raise taxes. Deukmejian said this was suggested by the mayor in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News. Mary Nichols, Bradley’s campaign manager, said the mayor did tell the news- paper that the spending ceiling was “arbitrary” and “at some time” it would have to be repealed or revised.

While stopping short of pledging not to raise taxes in a second term, Deukmejian told reporters Wednesday that “my record has been pretty good on this point and I am going to continue to try to keep California in the position that we’re in now. We used to be a high tax state. . . . Now we’re down to around 22nd position in the nation.”

California’s high tax ranking fell, in large part, because of Proposition 13, the 1978 ballot measure that drastically cut property taxes. Deukmejian did not support Proposition 13, and backed an alternative proposal instead.