Governor Says Schools Chief Is ‘Whining’
Gov. George Deukmejian, stepping up his fight with state school Supt. Bill Honig over education funding, Wednesday accused him of “whining” and recalled that Honig told voters in 1982 that schools did not need more money.
Deukmejian resurrected a newspaper interview featuring Honig in which the then-candidate said that “if you drop $1 billion in the state schools right now, it would be money ill spent.”
“He made that statement at a time when the public schools in California had not received a real increase in funding for five consecutive years,” Deukmejian told reporters at a Capitol news conference, claiming that Honig had now “changed his tune.”
The school superintendent replied that Deukmejian was making a “personal attack” on him in order “to cloud the issue that his budget is a step backward for the school system.”
Honig admitted making the comment in 1982, but said his position changed when he, the governor and the Legislature agreed on a bill requiring beefed-up graduation requirements, longer school days and more teacher accountability, among other things.
“I said putting more money in didn’t make sense unless you changed the philosophy. We changed the philosophy,” Honig said.
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