This Is Governing?

Not many pioneers would have reached California if their scouts had waited to see which direction the wagon train wanted to move and then galloped to the head of the line.

That’s not what the scouts were for. Yet Gov. George Deukmejian has something like that in mind on the question of whether $700 million should be invested in the state’s very future, the education of its children, or handed back to taxpayers. The dispute arises because state revenue this year will exceed an arbitrary limit on spending imposed by the 1979 Gann amendment.

Deukmejian vetoed a legislative plan to give the money to schools to carry on with education reforms--a veto that the Senate sustained Monday. The governor’s plan is to give the money back to taxpayers, but he now proposes a multiple-choice box on the next income-tax form. Taxpayers could decide whether they want the money back or want it to go to schools or some other worthy cause.

That is scarcely the way representative democracy is supposed to work. Legislators exist to gather data, talk out policy differences and set priorities based on something more than whim, and the highest priority for California these days is an education system capable of graduating young people who can think their way through problems to a livable future. A scout who waits to see where his wagon train is going so that he knows where to lead it is not much help.