For Deukmejian, Legislators, a New Start on Old Issues

A fresh start on some old problems awaits Republican Gov. George Deukmejian and the Democratic-controlled Legislature as a new political season begins today with the governor’s inauguration.

Finding a site for a new state prison in Los Angeles County--long a politically and emotionally charged issue that has defied resolution--grappling with major fiscal issues, and ever-present political tensions arising from a GOP governor dealing with a Democratic Legislature will confront Deukmejian and lawmakers.

Deukmejian, the state’s taciturn 35th governor who won reelection by a landslide, will be sworn in for his second term at 11 a.m. today on the steps of the Capitol in a ceremony fashioned by Walt Disney Productions. Every member of the Legislature has been invited, along with constitutional officers, justices of the state Supreme Court and other dignitaries.

The same day, the 1987 session of the Legislature gets under way in earnest. Lawmakers were sworn in during the first week in December, when they briefly organized the two houses before taking the rest of the month off.

Deukmejian will be sworn in by California Supreme Court Justice Malcolm Lucas, his former law partner and the man the governor has nominated to succeed Rose Elizabeth Bird as chief justice. She was defeated in the Nov. 4 election.

Also taking the oath of office for new four-year terms will be four Democratic constitutional officers--Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, Secretary of State March Fong Eu and Treasurer Jesse M. Unruh. Bill Honig, an independent, will be sworn in for a second term as superintendent of public instruction, a nonpartisan post.

One newcomer will join the group of constitutional officers: state Controller Gray Davis, a Democratic assemblyman and top aide to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. He will replace Democrat Ken Cory, who retired after three terms.

In some respects, the start of Deukmejian’s second term closely parallels the political situation he found when he took office in January, 1983.

For one thing, although Deukmejian’s own political standing seems at an all-time high, the governor is still forced to share power with Democrats in the Capitol.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) and Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) remain as the leaders of their respective chambers, just as they were during Deukmejian’s first inaugural. Democrats also hold a tight grip on all the partisan constitutional offices.

And, as in 1983, Deukmejian must deal with budget deficiencies and declining tax revenues. He enters the new year with a fiscal headache that threatens to wipe out most of the state’s $1-billion surplus.

The governor and Legislature also must deal with the long-festering issue of picking a site for a new state prison in Los Angeles County, with the issue apparently back at square one now that the owners of the downtown site that the governor prefers have agreed to sell a portion of the property to a real estate developer.

Also high on the political agenda are proposals to adapt state tax codes to changes enacted by Congress and President Reagan last year, legislative and administrative responses to voter-enacted initiatives dealing with English as the official state language, “deep pockets” liability insurance awards and elimination of toxic wastes from drinking water.

Stronger Position

In addition to his own overwhelming 1986 reelection victory over Democratic Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, the defeat of Bird is certain to serve as a reminder to Deukmejian’s political opponents that he begins his second term in a much stronger position politically than when he took office in 1983 after barely defeating Bradley.

Deukmejian campaigned actively to oust Bird. Her defeat, along with that of liberal Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin, gives a Republican governor the first opportunity to appoint a majority to the high court since the Great Depression.

But translating his political strength at the polls into legislative accomplishments will be one of Deukmejian’s biggest challenges as he faces the new year. Here are some of the issues confronting him and the Legislature in 1987:

Deukmejian vs. Legislature

Both Speaker Brown and Senate leader Roberti have been weakened somewhat by the loss of Democratic seats at the November elections, two in the Senate and three in the Assembly. One result is that although Democrats still firmly control both houses with diminished ranks, Democratic votes will be tougher to find on politically sensitive issues such as abortion.

During his first term, the Republican governor’s legislative initiatives were relatively modest, except for his programs to erase the 1983 deficit of $1.5 billion without a consumer tax increase and later to reorganize toxic waste management by state agencies. Democrats went along with his budget-balancing plan but they beat back his toxics proposals.

Fresh from winning reelection, Deukmejian, whose relations with the Legislature usually have been cantankerous, pronounced himself “in an excellent position” to deal with the lawmakers and declared that Democratic opposition to his programs constituted an election-year attempt to “do some damage to me.”

“Now that they see that that didn’t work,” he said at a press conference the day after the election, “I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to pull together.”

Persistent Issue

Still, the proposed Los Angeles prison shows no sign of evaporating as an issue. Top-level Deukmejian assistants have warned that the governor still intends to fight for the downtown site despite the sale of the property.

Democratic leaders, who favor an unspecified rural--and presumably Republican--area of the northern part of the county for the prison instead of the downtown site near the heavily Latino Eastside, have fought the governor to a standstill so far.

State law requires selection of a Los Angeles site before any new prisons can be opened, and two such institutions at San Diego and Stockton are nearing completion. At the very least, last week’s announcement of the sale of part of the preferred site complicates the designation of a Los Angeles County site, and thus postpones the opening of the other prisons.

Roberti and other opponents, chiefly Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), in whose district the downtown site is situated, maintain that in the rush to construct the institution the Administration has run roughshod over important environmental and safety concerns in the largely industrial area and in the adjoining neighborhoods.

Governor’s initiatives

Aides cautioned against expecting the low-key governor to suddenly propose long lists of new programs. “The governor’s style is the governor’s style. With George Deukmejian, what you see is what you get,” observed his chief of staff, Steve Merksamer.

But during and after the election campaign, Deukmejian sketched out a handful of legislative initiatives that he said he intends to pursue, ranging from another run at passing his toxics reorganization plan to locking up 16- and 17-year-old murderers in state prison for life without possibility of parole.

Additionally, Deukmejian, who is expected to announce his legislative program in his annual State of the State speech Wednesday, has already proposed a “Children’s Initiative” aimed at, among other things, turning youngsters against drugs and alcohol, improving the health-care training of day-care center workers, increasing research into the prevention of sudden infant death syndrome and increasing the penalties for adults who use children to commit crimes.

Crime Penalties

For senior citizens, he said he will propose legislation increasing the penalties against criminals who defraud the elderly, snatch their purses and burglarize their homes. Further, to help finance increased research into prevention of Alzheimer’s disease, Deukmejian said he wants to add a checkoff to the state income tax return so taxpayers can contribute part of their refund to the fight against the debilitating ailment.

Although twice defeated in his efforts to reorganize how the state bureaucracy manages various toxic programs, the governor said after the election that he intended to push for it again in what he hoped would be a bipartisan atmosphere. Democrats, however, have not indicated a change in their opposition to the proposal, which they charged was needlessly complicated and would not do the job.

Spending limitations

In 1987, Deukmejian and the Legislature must face two major fiscal issues--a constitutional limit on how much taxpayer money the state can spend in the fiscal year starting July 1 and a projected $900-million shortage in the current budget.

Deukmejian’s Department of Finance officials believe this will be the first year that the state will be forced to come to grips with the constitutional spending limit sponsored by anti-tax crusader Paul Gann and approved by voters in 1979.

The so-called Gann limit uses a formula based on the percentage increase in population and the cost of living index to set a limit on state spending. If tax revenues exceed the amount of allowed growth, the surplus must be returned to taxpayers.

Until last year, population growth and the cost of living were rising substantially faster than state spending. Consequently, the limit did not come into play.

But, in 1986, spending began rising faster than the other factors included in the formula, and the state came within about $50 million of reaching the limit in the current budget of $37 billion.

Breaking the Limit

For the fiscal year that starts next July 1, predictions indicate that the state will have a difficult time paying for all its programs without exceeding the limit. This is because some programs, like prisons, are growing faster than the level allowed by the Gann limit.

“The budget will be definitely impacted by the limit,” said state Finance Director Jesse Huff. “The limit itself permits somewhere between 4% and 5% growth. The prison area of the budget could approach a growth rate twice the overall budget.”

Huff and other Administration officials already have met with administrators and others involved in state-financed education and health-care services and programs to warn them of possible budget cuts.

The other fiscal issue is a potential $900-million shortage in the current budget that was announced in December, the result of $400 million in overruns coupled with projections that revenues will be short by as much as $500 million by the end of the fiscal year.

The shortfall would all but wipe out the governor’s jealously guarded $1-billion budget surplus.

But in two rounds of pre-Christmas budget cutting, Deukmejian trimmed state administrative services by 2% and ordered cuts in the Medi-Cal and prison programs in an attempt to salvage a portion of the reserve.

Medi-Cal Cuts

The cuts are designed to save about $200 million. Officials indicated that further cuts are in order, particularly in the $5-billion Medi-Cal program for the poor.

However, resistance in the Legislature is developing. Several Democrats have accused the governor of deliberately creating the shortages in Medi-Cal to justify deep cuts in the program.

While cuts in current spending will ease the Gann limit problem in next year’s budget somewhat, the issue is not expected to disappear.

“If we can fund existing programs, especially in areas such as education and transportation, and maintain for ourselves a consistent position with the Gann limit, that will be a major success,” Roberti said. “That is going to take some very sophisticated legerdemain.”

Roberti said he opposed any attempted “dramatic” effort to circumvent the Gann limit, as has been rumored, without voter approval. However, he said he believed that “we have some maneuverability” under the voter-imposed limitation to continue financing needed programs.

Tax conformity

Roberti said he hopes the Legislature will “come to grips” with tax reform and tax simplification this session.

“There will be, I suspect, an attempt to try to reduce the tax rate in the state somewhat and do that by eliminating loopholes. The governor also alluded to some way to do that.” On tax simplification, he voiced hope that the California income tax forms could be brought in line with federal forms “or hopefully simplify the whole process with simply a postcard for some taxpayers.”

But Republican Nielsen was pessimistic that the Legislature would enact an overhaul of the California tax system, noting that “we have been trying to do some of those things for years” with or without an incentive from the federal government.

“I think we are going to have extensive debate and discussion, but at the end of this year’s session, we will not have accomplished very much,” Nielsen said.

In the Assembly, Republican Leader Pat Nolan of Glendale called federal conformity and a reduction in state income tax rates a top priority. Conformity legislation already has been proposed in both chambers.

Bilingual issues

Fanned by overwhelming approval of of Proposition 63, the ballot measure that makes English the official language of California, a major battle looms over extending state controls on bilingual education into the 1990s. Deukmejian last year vetoed legislation that would have extended bilingual and other education programs on grounds that a study is needed to determine whether they are cost-effective.

Unless the Legislature and Deukmejian do something to extend the program, bilingual education is scheduled on July 1 to fall to local school districts for administration rather than by those in the Sacramento education bureaucracy.

Republicans generally favor this, charging that the system operated by the state is inflexible and fails to meet the individual needs of local districts. They further contend that too much emphasis is placed on teaching non-English-speaking students in their native languages and not enough stress is placed on swiftly making them proficient in English.

But some defenders of current bilingual programs maintain that allowing them to revert to strict local control is merely a smoke screen for downgrading bilingual education and eventually abandoning it.

Seeks a Change

Nolan maintains that the bilingual program must be changed to “give parents and school districts more flexibility in choosing programs that will most quickly teach their children to speak English.”

Speaker Brown, who carried the bilingual extension bill last year, has promised to bring it back this time around, noting that it had the support of a high-level advisory task force whose members included appointees of Deukmejian.

Senate leader Roberti, a Democrat who supports bilingual education and wants no part of dismantling it, indicates, nevertheless, that he is not totally satisfied with the way it operates. “The Legislature must make it clear that bilingual education is that by which people achieve English proficiency,” he said.

The looming dispute probably will be fueled by voter approval of Proposition 63, which, among other things, directs the Legislature to “preserve and enhance” the role of English as the common language of California.

But at least one spinoff of the initiative has attracted bipartisan support--proposed expansion of English classes for adults who speak another language and for adult Californians who are functionally illiterate. The legislation will be pushed by Democratic Sen. Art Torres, who represents much of heavily Latino East Los Angeles, and Assemblyman Frank Hill (R-Whittier), a conservative and major supporter of Proposition 63.

Non-Essential Services

In the meantime, Hill intends to carry legislation that would eliminate “non-essential” government services that are performed in languages other than English. At the top of his list are welfare forms, driver’s license handbooks and University of California scholarship applications.

Hill will face major opposition. Already, Brown, an opponent of the initiative, has served notice that “almost nothing” will emerge from the Assembly. Likewise, Roberti, while conceding that the Legislature is under orders by the voters to implement the English-only law, said he foresees no major changes until courts have acted on potential lawsuits.

Insurance reform

Voter approval last June of Proposition 51, the so-called “deep pockets” initiative, anesthetized the legislative fight over liability insurance reform. But the issue is certain to awaken on several fronts.

For one thing, commercial liability insurance is still difficult to obtain at reasonably affordable rates. For another, insurance companies are expected to propose limitations on certain kinds of judgments along the lines of Proposition 51. Legislation also is expected that would subject the insurance industry to tighter regulation by the state.

On the sideline, at least for now, is a suggestion by the insurance industry that applicants for life and health insurance must pass an AIDS screening examination as a condition of receiving insurance. If the notion is written into legislation, a major fight would be certain.