Getting Out of the Mess

California legislators are marching lock-step into the jaws of fiscal massacre, as one key budget negotiator phrased it on Tuesday. Cowed by Gov. George Deukmejian’s veto threats, the lawmakers refuse to consider reasonable revenue-raising options to buffer the effect of a massive state tax shortfall.

Without such a cushion, the deficit can be made up only by slashing roughly $1 billion from the current version of the budget. This would include hundreds of millions of dollars in programs added by the Democratic-controlled Legislature, but also hundreds of millions from the Republican governor’s original inadequate spending plan. Once the Legislature agrees on a final budget, there still will be no guarantee against the governor’s cutting even more with his line-item veto.

As lawmakers lined up before the budget conference committee to plead for their own special projects, they got a well-deserved lecture from Assembly Ways and Means Chairman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara): “You want to have it your way. No taxes. But you all want your programs.” Vasconcellos at least has had the courage to support revenue increases through the program that the governor originally proposed and then abandoned. So, too, has Sen. Alfred E. Alquist (D-San Jose), chairman of the Senate’s budget committee.

Their proposals are not tax increases as such, but they seek to recoup some of the revenue unintentionally lost through quirks in state and federal tax-reform programs. A third proposal, by Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg (D-Sacramento), contained $556 million in additional revenue gained soley through accelerated tax collections, many of which make sense even if there was no fiscal emergency. But it was rejected by the Assembly. Variations of the Isenberg plan could bring in as much as $1 billion on a one-time basis without raising taxes by a single penny, but they have not been given serious consideration.

Without any revenue makeup program, the wealthy get a windfall and battered state and local programs will be further damaged. While the governor and Democratic leaders in the Legislature play election-year games, California’s neediest citizens and programs suffer. There still is time for the governor and Legislature to negotiate a compromise package of cuts and revenue collections if they really are interested in seeing California progress rather than sink further into mediocrity.