Senate Breaks Deadlock, Approves $41.1-Billion Budget

Four Republicans in the Senate broke the 9-day-old budget deadlock in the upper house Tuesday, joining with Democrats to approve a $41.1-billion spending plan for the new fiscal year and send the issue to the Assembly.

Assembly Republicans, who now represent the last major obstacle to passage of the budget, showed no sign of yielding to Democrats.

By losing their allies in the Senate, however, GOP lawmakers in the lower house will be under considerably more pressure to pass the budget.

The final vote for the budget in the Senate was 29 to 8, with all the “no” votes cast by Republicans. Twenty-seven votes--a two-thirds majority of the Senate membership--were needed for passage of the budget.

The way was cleared for passage in the Senate when former Republican leader Sen. John Seymour of Anaheim broke ranks with other GOP lawmakers and said he was tired of “playing chicken” with such urgent budget issues as funding for education.

Noting that public schools stand to lose $217 million if the Legislature does not pass the budget and a companion bill by the end of the fiscal year on Tuesday, Seymour said during a dramatic floor speech that lawmakers were running “the risk of going over the cliff.” Seymour called further delay in acting on the budget “irresponsible.”

Speaking to other Republicans, Seymour said, “If you want to play chicken with that kind of money, perhaps that’s your game. I’ve played the game long enough.”

With that, Seymour joined with 24 Democrats and independent Sen. Quentin L. Kopp of San Francisco to give the budget 26 votes, one short of the necessary two-thirds majority needed to pass the spending plan.

Republicans, as they did when they first rejected the budget June 15, refused to vote.

Then, after eight dramatic roll calls were met by a stony silence from Republicans, Democrats called for a vote on a companion bill to the budget.

The secondary bill, necessary to balance spending in the main budget bill through a series of technical adjustments, was approved by both Republicans and Democrats with no debate, passing 34 to 0.

A key provision of the companion bill is a change in the definition of some state and school district expenditures what will allow the state to spend an additional $400 million under the spending limit imposed by voters in 1979.

Once that bill passed, the resistance of several Republicans appeared to weaken. After a closed-door caucus meeting, three other Republicans joined Seymour to vote with the others and pass the budget.

One of the Republicans who relented was Sen. Marian Bergeson of Newport Beach.

“I just don’t see any useful purpose in continuing to hold up the budget. The business of the state has to carry forward,” she said after the vote.

The other two Republicans to vote for the budget were Sens. Becky Morgan of Los Altos Hills and James W. Nielsen of Rohnert Park.

The only issue holding up the budget was the dispute over a $700-million rebate to taxpayers sought by Gov. George Deukmejian. Republicans, led by Deukmejian, insist that the money must be returned to taxpayers under terms of the 1979 spending limit initiative. But Democrats, arguing that the rebate will amount to an average of just $50 per taxpayer, insist that the money would be much better spent to relieve overcrowded classrooms and other problems facing public schools.

Numerous private talks have been held by Republican and Democrat leaders in recent days, but no acceptable compromise was presented by either side.

Sen. Alfred E. Alquist (D-San Jose), a veteran fiscal committee chairman who is carrying the budget bill, said during the floor debate that he was “amazed that the Republican leadership has chosen to tie passage of the rebate bill to passage of the budget.”

Alquist warned Republicans “we will be a long time without a budget if we wait for that $700 million to be rebated.”

After the vote, Senate GOP Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno said that despite the vote on the budget, Republican “convictions” on the $700-million rebate “stay strong” and the fight over that issue will continue.

In the lower house, Assembly Republican Leader Pat Nolan of Glendale said he was not angry that GOP lawmakers in the Senate dropped their opposition to the budget.

“We are proud of them that they held out as long as they did,” he said.

Nolan said Republicans in the Assembly will continue to hold out against voting for a budget until the tax rebate plan is passed or until July 1, when an additional $400 million would be added to the state’s surplus and the amount designated for the rebate would grow to $1.1 billion.

The GOP lawmaker said he did not think Republicans in the lower house would feel pressured to vote for the budget just because the Senate acted on it. He said that GOP legislators discussed the Senate vote during a closed-door meeting “and no one suggested we change our position.”

The two-house rivalry surfaced during the Senate debate on the budget when Democratic Floor Leader Barry Keene of Benicia called lower-house Republicans “cavemen” and said the real obstacle was in the Assembly.

“You know how the cavemen vote over there,” Keene said, arguing that Senate Republicans had more in common with Democrats than they did their colleagues in the lower house. “They vote as a bloc, they vote as a cult and they are not going to give us the votes to enact a compromise.”

Keene said, “It makes no sense that we are fighting their war over here.”

At one point, Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) pleaded with Deukmejian to release Republicans and allow them to vote for the budget.

Roberti said it was Deukmejian’s “responsibility” to produce a budget.

“It’s his responsibility. He cannot just sit in the corner office mute and let the state of California sort of flounder without exerting any leadership,” Roberti said.

The budget sent to the Assembly differs sharply from Deukmejian’s $40.8-billion spending plan, and Administration officials said the governor will have to use his veto power to trim as much as $500 million from the Senate-approved budget.

Deukmejian, once he gets the budget, will be allowed to veto individual expenditures, as well as whole programs.

Democrats say their version of the budget contains a reserve of $943 million. That would appear close to Deukmejian’s goal of creating a $1-billion reserve, but a Department of Finance analysis contends that the Legislature’s budget would produce a reserve of only $619 million.