Conferees Move Closer to Compromise on Budget Plan

An Assembly-Senate conference committee moved closer to agreement on a compromise state budget of nearly $50 billion Friday, but still faced the problem of having to pare back at least $550 million in spending to bring it in line with Gov. George Deukmejian’s spending target.

Continuing to wade through more than 700 pages of budget papers, the six-member committee so far has made decisions on hundreds of items but still is roughly $550 million short of producing a budget with the $1.2-billion reserve that Deukmejian is demanding.

In recent rounds of budget cutting, the four Democrats on the committee zeroed in on programs favored by the Republican governor.

Mental Health Plan

On Friday, majority Democrats agreed on a compromise mental health funding plan that would provide community-based programs with $75 million in increases in the upcoming fiscal year. That is $50 million less than the lawmakers originally wanted, but still about twice what Deukmejian proposed.

Under the Democratic plan, Los Angeles County would take in about $22 million of the total, roughly $15 million more than the county would have received under a mental health funding proposal advanced by Deukmejian and Republicans. That plan called for the money to be spread out more evenly, with hefty increases earmarked for counties now receiving less than the statewide average of mental health grants.

Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim), one of two Republicans on the budget panel, said after a 4-2 vote: “The first rule around here is to take care of your own constituents, and that is the rule that prevailed. I will recommend that the governor veto” the money.

Two of the Democrats on the committee are from Los Angeles--Sen. Alan Robbins and Assemblywoman Maxine Waters.

In an earlier action, the committee reduced $28 million from a special $100-million appropriation sought by Deukmejian for the Department of Corrections to help pay the soaring costs of prison expansion.

Many of the cuts were much smaller, such as $1.6 million trimmed from the governor’s budget for the state Office of Tourism.

This year’s conference committee deliberations lack much of the drama of past years because many of the major decisions usually made by the budget writers have been taken out of their hands.

For example, the committee has turned over public school budget issues to lawmakers who are negotiating legislation to implement Proposition 98, the school-funding measure approved by voters last November.

And Deukmejian and party leaders from the Assembly and Senate have been meeting for weeks in closed-door sessions in an effort to work out a broad budget agreement on such issues as transportation funding, Proposition 98 and talked-about changes in the voter-approved spending limit.

Deukmejian and legislative leaders are seeking ways around voter-imposed limits on spending that could prevent them from using a substantial portion of a $2.5-billion tax windfall on financially struggling health and welfare programs.

The conference committee is operating on the assumption that the talks between Deukmejian and legislative leaders will lead to an agreement that will allow them to get around the spending limit restrictions. If the talks fail, lawmakers face the prospect of having to reduce spending by an additional $1 billion or so.

Lawmakers hope to wind up work on the budget early next week.

“We will probably come back Monday morning and try to build a bigger reserve,” said Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-San Jose).

Robbins said, “I’m confident we’ll be able to get the reserve up to $1 billion.”

In one of the dozens of actions taken this week, the committee approved language restricting abortions to poor women on the Medi-Cal program to instances in which the mother’s life is in danger, where the pregnancy results from rape or incest, or where the fetus is developing abnormally. The restrictions are the same ones that have been overturned by the courts each year for the last nine years.

The committee also dealt the Deukmejian Administration a defeat by removing from the budget a program that would have permitted farmers to use a state “quality and safety” seal on fruits and vegetables even though they might contain low levels of pesticides.

The Department of Food and Agriculture had asked for authorization to spend $1.3 million--to be raised by fees collected from growers--to launch the program. Growers had asked for the program, hoping that it would ease widespread fears among consumers about pesticides in food. But environmental groups blasted the efforts as nothing more than a public relations campaign, noting that the state did not plan to test the produce for pesticides before it put on the seal.