Governor Unveils His ‘Children’s Initiative’

Gov. George Deukmejian on Thursday unveiled a $5-million, seven-point “children’s initiative” to improve the health and safety of young people and then accused his Democratic rival of supporting a “big-brother scheme to take kids out of their homes and send them to state institutions.”

But Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, Deukmejian’s opponent, said he never made any such proposal and said the Republican governor “obviously doesn’t know how to tell the truth.”

The governor mapped out the proposals, which he said he would seek to implement during his second term, during a luncheon speech to the San Jose Commonwealth and Churchill clubs. The proposals included involving senior citizens in child care, placing liens on property owned by parents who do not make child-support payments and increasing research into the mysterious fatal illness among infants known as crib death.

Deukmejian also said he would create a “governor’s council on physical fitness and health.”

After the speech, Deukmejian told reporters that Bradley has “offered only one idea for California children, a big-government, big-brother scheme to take kids out of their homes and send them to state institutions.”

The governor based his charge on statements Bradley made in a television interview last year when discussing how to help children in Watts.

“I suggest that we simply take young people out of the environment where they have no motivation. . . ,” the mayor said at the time. “I would propose that we take them as early as we can get them in elementary school and keep them in that school setting, that formalized training and motivational setting away from their parents, because that’s what it’s going to take. . . .”

Bradley explained that any plan based on his idea would be voluntary and would operate much like a child-care center.

“You might have a residential-care program or you might even be able to permit some of them to go home in the evening so they are not totally separate from their parents,” he said.

Deukmejian charged that Bradley’s “outlandish idea” would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and questioned whether it would be mandatory.

“Whose children would he remove from the home?” the governor asked.

“George Deukmejian obviously doesn’t know what he’s talking about. . . . To dredge up an old issue like this is typical of his whole campaign,” said Bradley during a San Francisco press conference.

Bradley described his proposal as “day care, training and counseling” for children whose mothers need assistance.

“It’s a voluntary program. No one is forced. No one is incarcerated,” said the mayor, who was in Northern California to receive the endorsement of the San Francisco Police Officers’ Assn.

In his seven-point program, Deukmejian called for increasing penalties for crimes against children and repeated his call for the death penalty in cases where a helpless child is murdered.

The governor also proposed giving liability protection to manufacturers of vaccines for such diseases as whooping cough, small pox and tetanus, who are reluctant to continue producing the vaccines because of growing insurance costs.

“Child care, drug-abuse prevention, accident prevention, medical services, child support, crime prevention and physical fitness. Our initiatives in these essential areas can make life healthier, happier and safer for California children,” he said.

Asked why he had not carried out his proposals during his first term, Deukmejian said: “You can’t possibly do everything all at one time. We are starting to build on what we have already done.”