Budget Writers Vote $50 Million for 4 UCI Projects

UC Irvine came out ahead Thursday as state budget negotiators put the finishing touches on a $41.5-billion spending plan and sent the tentative budget to the Senate and Assembly floors for final approval.

The budget conference committee’s plan provides money for the first phase of development of facilities at Chino Hills State Park, several Orange County community college projects and a new wing for the science building at Cal State Fullerton.

Orange County was given $5.7 million out of a new, no-strings-attached bundle of state aid approved at the last minute for financially strapped counties throughout California.

The proposed budget, for the fiscal year beginning July 1, includes more than $50 million for four construction projects at UC Irvine and the university’s medical center in Orange.

The money would pay for construction of a new biology building and plans for renovation of an existing science building on the UCI campus, as well as construction of a new cancer treatment center and plans for a new psychiatric care facility at the medical center.

Ranch Santiago Expansion

For Orange County community colleges, the proposed budget includes $3.1 million to expand the Orange campus of the Rancho Santiago Community College District and $350,000 to add room for instruction of students with learning disabilities at the same campus. The budget also contains $464,000 for construction of an addition to the biology building at Orange Coast Community College.

Cal State Fullerton stands to receive $387,000 for preliminary plans that would be the first step toward construction of a $28.2-million addition and renovation of the school’s science building, McCarthy Hall.

The budget also includes $303,000 for preliminary work toward development of the Chino Hills State Park. The $2.24-million project eventually will provide 1.3 miles of paved roads, picnic sites, erosion control and an employee mobile home site.

The budget was approved late Thursday, soon after legislators compromised to end a weeklong stalemate over how to distribute $88 million in state aid to counties--a one-time allocation by the state that is expected to be spent on health and social services programs.

Orange County, which eventually got $5.79 million, was at the center of the fray, battling alongside San Diego and against Los Angeles.

Although the decision meant a difference of only a few million dollars in the counties’ billion-dollar budgets, they fought bitterly over the funds they said are desperately needed to keep pace with the rising costs of programs required by the state.

Negotiating over the money among local government lobbyists in a committee hearing room became so furious at one point that Sen. Alfred E. Alquist (D-San Jose), chairman of the two-house budget conference committee, banged his gavel and ruled that any lobbyist conversing in the aisles would be deprived of his county’s share of the disputed funds.

Alquist’s move quieted the audience for a time, but the committee itself went right on fighting, with Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) battling Los Angeles Democrats Sen. Alan Robbins and Assemblywoman Maxine Waters.

“We’re usually a nice quiet family, until we get a pot of money and try to divvy it up,” said Larry Naake, executive director of the County Supervisors Assn. of California. “I’ve tried to tell them (the counties) to be like Ozzie and Harriet. But they seem more intent on being like the Ewings (of the television show ‘Dallas’).”

Traditionally, state aid to counties has been doled out through a formula based on how much the counties were spending on health services programs in 1977, the year before Proposition 13 cut property taxes and imposed the requirement for a two-thirds vote of the people to raise taxes or create new ones.

But Orange, San Diego and a few other California counties that a decade ago were just beginning to experience the social problems brought on by rapid urbanization were at that time spending relatively little on programs to deal with such urban ills. Orange and San Diego counties also had a tradition of conservative elected leadership that looked askance at the amounts of money being spent on health and social programs for the poor.

Spending More and More

Los Angeles County, by contrast, was already spending heavily on public health services when Proposition 13 was enacted.

A decade later, the smaller but rapidly growing counties argue that they are spending more and more to treat drug and alcohol abuse, provide medical care for the poor and treat the mentally ill homeless wandering the streets and parks of their cities. But they’re still getting nearly the same percentage of state funding that they did in 1978.

“That formula was designed 10 years ago, and this is not the same state it was 10 years ago,” said Assemblyman John Vasconcellos, a powerful Santa Clara County Democrat who sided with Bergeson against the Los Angeles legislators, ensuring that the matter would be dragged out until a compromise was reached.

Bergeson said use of the traditional formula “would literally destroy many of these programs that are already in serious trouble. It’s simply an unfair method of computing for those counties.”

But Waters said Los Angeles, too, is hard pressed. She said that the county is short $77 million for next year’s budget and that $45 million of that is in health programs.

Waters chided Bergeson for arguing over the relatively small amount allocation for aid to counties rather than working to persuade Gov. George Deukmejian to decrease his proposed $700-million tax rebate or soften his demand for a $1-billion surplus for emergencies.

‘Measly Amount of Money’

“We’re scrapping about a measly amount of money in relation to what we could be talking about,” Waters said. “The governor wants a $1-billion reserve, which means we have to cut and cut and cut further.

“Go and get us some relief from that requirement,” Waters told Bergeson and a Republicans colleague. “Go and ask him if he’ll take $600 million, if he’ll take $700 million. We’ll give you some money for Orange County. We’ll give you some money for San Diego. . . . We’ll increase it for everybody.”

Eventually, the lawmakers agreed to divide the money using a compromise formula based partly on population, partly on current spending and partly on pre-Proposition 13 spending levels.

Bergeson was able to extract a promise from the Los Angeles legislators that the old formula opposed by Orange County would be re-examined and probably replaced by a new scheme more accurately reflecting the current needs of the state’s rapidly growing counties.

“This distribution may not be as fair as we would like, but we got an assurance that it would be one time only, and we’ve built in a commitment to provide a thorough investigation and recommendation for a truly reflective formula,” Bergeson said.