Cutting of Budget Up to Governor, Democrats Stress

Assembly Democratic leaders said Monday it is up to Gov. George Deukmejian, not them, to come up with a list of $800 million in budget cuts needed because of the governor’s decision to drop his tax-increase plan.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) said he expects Deukmejian to produce “a balanced budget,” a follow-up to the governor’s announcement Friday that he was withdrawing his tax plan.

Deukmejian, by dropping his tax plan, left his proposed budget at least $800 million short of revenue. The governor said if the Legislature was unwilling to make the necessary budget cuts, he would.

But the Speaker, in comments to reporters, made it clear that he is unwilling to complete work on the Legislature’s $45-billion version of the budget before he knows the cuts that the governor will make.

Constitutional Requirement

“I want to see his spending program in view of the reduced level of revenues. We want the list of cuts, we want the list of recommendations that he would make,” said Brown, who later quipped, “I presume that we will still be here in August, while the Republicans are holding their (national) convention, waiting for the governor’s budget.”

Deukmejian Press Secretary Kevin Brett, however, said the Legislature is required by the state Constitution to complete its work on the proposed budget and send it to the governor by June 15.

Brett said “the governor will take the responsibility” for the budget cuts, but he wants the budget first.

The Speaker’s comments came shortly after the Assembly referred both its own $45.1-billion version of the new state budget and the Senate’s $45-billion draft of the spending plan to the Ways and Means Committee. Both measures, containing appropriations for the new budget year that will begin July 1, had been awaiting floor votes that would have sent them to a conference committee.

Democrats scheduled a Ways and Means Committee hearing for Wednesday. They said they were going to invite state Finance Director Jesse R. Huff, Deukmejian’s top budget adviser, to outline the governor’s budget plan.

Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), chairman of the committee, said the move to send the budgets back for committee action means that the Legislature will probably not be able to produce a budget by its June 15 constitutional deadline.

Vasconcellos said it is the governor’s “responsibility to balance the budget, and it’s time he lived up to it.”

“He’s the governor, I’m not,” he said.

Even though the legislative versions of the budget would increase state spending during the next fiscal year by about 8%, roughly twice the expected rate of inflation, Democrats believe that there is no room for budget cuts. They point to budgetary pressures created by the influx of 140,000 new students into the public school system and the need to bolster acquired immune deficiency syndrome research and treatment programs and other financially struggling health programs.

Assemblyman Robert J. Campbell (D-Richmond), a member of the Ways and Means Committee, said, “We can’t cut programs. There is nothing to cut.

“The school budgets are hurting, the health budgets are hurting. Look at the AIDS problem we have, the toxics problem we have. There is no way we can cut back that much.”

Position Stated

Vasconcellos also said he is not willing to make any major cuts.

But Republicans were taking a different view.

Assembly Republican Leader Pat Nolan of Glendale said Democrats had put together “an inflated, overspending budget” that could be cut.

Assemblyman William P. Baker (R-Danville), the GOP vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, predicted that the budget will have to be reduced from $800 million to $1.2 billion.

“We can certainly do it, it’s just a matter of doing it in a way that impacts our most important programs least. We haven’t put on a hiring freeze. We are still doing business as usual. I think we should be working on stopping all spending right now,” Baker said.