Democrat Attack Fails to Override Budget Vetoes

Senate Democrats on Thursday mounted a highly partisan but unsuccessful attack against carefully selected budget vetoes by Gov. George Deukmejian in a move their leader conceded was aimed more at next year’s elections than at overriding the governor.

They used such shrill political rhetoric as “mean,” “cruel,” “vindictive,” “petty” and “hateful” to deplore the vetoes that eliminated the state’s worker-safety enforcement program, sharply reduced support of teacher training and improvement programs and denied hospital coverage to 20 Capitol elevator operators.

At one point, Republicans, weary of the Democratic charges in speech after speech, walked off the floor and into the Senate coffee shop, leaving only their leader, Sen. Ken Maddy of Fresno, to defend the governor’s actions.

Later, some Democrats, also tiring of the highly charged oratory and foreseeing that they would be unable to reverse the vetoes, left the chamber for coffee as the high-decibel speeches rolled on.

A Deukmejian veto has never been overridden by both the Senate and Assembly, although the Senate did reverse him once.

Republicans united behind the GOP chief executive and blocked the Democratic effort to override the veto of $32 million from teacher and education programs and $8.2 million he struck from the budget to finance state enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Act for working people.

However, the Senate put off until another day action on reversing the veto of $20,000 to provide hospital insurance for the Capitol elevator operators, most of them minority women.

Maddy indicated that Deukmejian did not want the elevator operator veto brought to a vote and reported that the Administration would attempt to resolve the discomforting issue without pressure from the Legislature.

Democratic leaders acknowledged that they selected the occupational safety and education program vetoes for an override action because those programs seem to be politically popular with many Californians. One Democrat said the elevator operator issue was picked “just to point out how vindictive the vetoes really are.”

At the outset, Democrats ringed part of the ornate Senate chamber with charts and graphs mounted on easels to help ram home their arguments on worker safety and teacher improvements. Also on hand was a Democratic staff cameraman, dutifully snapping photographs of Democrats as nearly a dozen rose to make a speech.

Usually, visual props are reserved for floor debates when television cameras are on hand. This time, however, the television cameras were in the Assembly recording a floor fight over prison siting in Los Angeles County.

A Democratic staff adviser said that photos taken by the cameraman likely will be used in taxpayer-financed newsletters that lawmakers send to constituents and may even find their way into election campaign mailers.

Elimination of the state-financed worker safety program was originally proposed by Deukmejian in the budget he submitted Jan. 10. The program is strongly supported by labor, and even some employer organizations opposed dismantling it. The state program has been taken over by the federal government, which Deukmejian maintained would do as good a job as the state in enforcing worker safety standards.

‘Political Retribution’

“This is plain, unvarnished political retribution against organized labor,” Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) said of the veto. He charged Deukmejian put “smallness and hatefulness above the people he is supposed to be governing.”

Another pro-labor Democrat, Sen. Nicholas C. Petris of Oakland, said he liked “to consider Gov. Deukmejian a decent human being,” but with the elimination of the worker safety program, “it seems he is trying to drive California back to the 17th or 16th centuries.”

The override failed on a 25-9 vote, two votes short of the two-thirds required in the 40-member Senate. All Democrats and Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco) voted aye. The no votes were cast by Republicans.

Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), who authored the landmark education reform law of 1983, said it “makes no sense” to veto programs meant to improve the quality of teachers, a keystone of the reform legislation.

Defended Vetoes

But Maddy, who defended the gubernatorial vetoes, said that if Democrats had accepted Deukmejian’s formula for an income tax rebate, an additional $200 million would have been available for education and the governor likely would not have vetoed the teacher programs.

“We played the big game of chicken,” he told Democrats. “All sides did. Now we are stuck with what we have.”

Hart countered, “We’re only stuck with it if we don’t override the governor’s veto.”

The 25-9 override vote was virtually identical to the one cast on the worker safety veto.

Maddy said Republicans who left the chamber rather than debate the vetoes meant “no disrespect” to Democrats. But he made it clear that they did not intend to be props for the Democrats’ show.

Later, Roberti readily conceded that “we knew going in that our chances (to override) were not strong because the Republicans are walking pretty much in lock-step with the governor.”

But, with an eye toward the 1988 legislative elections, he said Democrats wanted “to let the people know where the Democrats stand and where the Republicans stand on these issues. When the elections (come) up, we intend to use it.”