State Spending Initiative Headed for Polls : Million Sign Petition to Ease Prop. 4 Limits

More then 1 million Californians have signed an initiative to ease the limits on growth of state spending set by tax crusader Paul Gann’s Proposition 4 in 1979, Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said Thursday.

The proposed amendment to the state Constitution is expected to go before the voters in the primary election next year, Honig said. Any constitutional amendment at present requires 595,485 signatures to get on the ballot.

Honig made the announcement at a news conference he shared with officials of the League of California Cities, the County Supervisors Assn. and spokesmen for other government agencies hit hard by the 1979 limitation on state spending.

Backers will submit 1,067,000 signatures to county voter registrars for verification by the end of the week, Honig said.

He said the measure would have no effect on Proposition 13, the property tax limitation promoted by Gann and the late Howard Jarvis, and adopted by the state’s voters in 1978.

Honig cited an estimate by the office of Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp that the measure would make up to $800 million more available for local governments, highways, schools and social programs in the 1988-89 fiscal year.

Proposition 4 set up a formula to limit growth in state government spending. Factors in it include population growth and the growth of the federal government’s cost-of-living index although growth of personal income can become the ceiling if it is smaller than the other two.

The proposed initiative drawn up by Honig’s group, Californians for Quality Government, is based on personal income growth and the rise of the cost-of-living index in California, rather than the whole country.