New Direction--Down

Gov. George Deukmejian has carved $663 million from the new state budget--an act that Californians may look back on more as vandalism than veto.

What the governor cut is a relatively small amount weighed against a budget that still totals $55.9 billion in state and federal funds. But for many programs the cuts were deep enough to hurt.

Public education in the grades from kindergarten through high school was a big loser. The state Department of Education, which suffered a 10% reduction in its own budget, calculates that school districts will be $500 million short of the money that they need to maintain the momentum of school reforms that began in 1983.

Public health, particularly programs that serve California’s poor, was another big loser. Deukmejian cut $240 million from health programs--including prenatal care, trauma centers and others. The budget for AIDS education and research will be $63 million, twice that of last year, but $22 million below what the Legislature appropriated.

The money that those state services will lose now goes into a $1.1-billion pot that the governor says should be used to finance a 15% tax rebate, up to a maximum of $300 per couple.

The governor’s budget was not a total disaster. The university and state university systems fared well, and community colleges--with an increase of 7.1% from the state’s general revenues--fared even better. Other big budget winners were the state’s crowded prisons.

Deukmejian said again that education still will get about 55% of California’s general funds, and that is nearly true. What he did not say is that, even with extra money to cover rising enrollments and costs, schools must get by next year on less than they had this year when their budgets are adjusted for inflation.

In producing a budget that fails even to maintain current levels of service--particularly for the poor--the governor invoked the constitutional limits imposed on state spending by Proposition 4, approved by voters at a special election in 1979. He seems happy with the ceiling. We think that the formula used to calculate spending limits is so out of step with California’s growth and need to invest for the future, particularly in education, that it should be repealed--or at least modified.

Deukmejian’s appraisal of his budget as the payoff of his effort to turn the state from deficits to taxpayer dividends would be more appropriate to the annual report of a small-town bank than the investment plan of the nation’s largest state. But he was on the mark when he said that it also stands for “where California is headed”--and the direction seems all wrong to us.

Even with substantial increases for education starting in 1983, California is falling behind other states in school spending. The new budget will push California farther down the list. That is where the state is headed, but it should not be.

Civilized societies are judged by the way they treat their poor and elderly. Judging from the new budget, California is headed away from civility.

Even during the periods of greatest expansion in transportation, California paid cash for its roads and freeways. Now the governor proposes using bond funds. That is no more the right sign of California’s direction than is a prison budget rising at the same time that an education budget falls.

The governor’s budget shows Californians one direction in which they can travel, one that winds through mediocrity to civic complacency. We like the way Californians were headed before Proposition 4 intervened--in the directions of challenge and excellence.

In November of next year California voters will be asked to change their minds about Proposition 4 and about the direction the state is headed by changing the formula for setting limits under Proposition 4. If they don’t want more budgets for education and health like this one, it is essential that they make that change.