Governor Cuts Freely at Funds for County

Gov. George Deukmejian’s blue pencil fell heavy on San Diego County Friday as he vetoed millions of dollars in local projects before signing the state’s $49.3-billion budget.

Despite the cuts, Deukmejian left intact legislation sponsored by Assemblyman Robert C. Frazee (R-Carlsbad) to set aside $500,000 to help build migrant farm-worker housing in North County, a proposal that the governor disallowed last year.

“I’m extremely pleased that there is recognition that the homeless problem is much greater than the usual view of people wandering on the streets in the inner-city,” Frazee said Friday.

Last year, Deukmejian vetoed the $500,000 migrant housing request after explaining that “there did not seem to be community support for the program,” Frazee said.

That observation prompted Frazee to pull together community activists and other local governmental officials in a task force to address the problem and send a message to the governor that San Diego County needs the housing to help farm workers now living in makeshift huts in North County ravines and canyons.

“They are economic contributors to our society, and there’s a recognition that there needs to be participation by all levels of government in solving the problem,” he said, adding that the one-time $500,000 appropriation is intended to be used as “seed” money for housing projects.

Lost Out on Parks, Education

While the county picked up money for farm-worker housing, it lost several key park and higher education projects in Deukmejian’s quest to trim $489 million--or 1%--of the spending plan sent to him by the Legislature last week.

Gone is $375,000 set aside by the Legislature to pay for restoration of Mission Bay, which has been bedeviled by a series of sewage spills in recent years. Also gone is $4.7 million lawmakers set aside for a new chemistry and geology building at San Diego State University.

Another cut erased $2.7 million for the purchase of the Bohannon Pottery Village as part of the Old Town State Park, described by Assemblywoman Lucy Killea (D-San Diego) as one of the biggest losses in this year’s budget wars.

Killea and other legislators wanted to purchase the village property to create a formal entrance to the popular tourist attraction. “That’s something we can come back on and recoup next year,” Killea said. “I intend to work on it.”

Deukmejian also deleted $1.2 million that state Sen. William A. Craven (R-Oceanside) wanted to buy 2.15 acres close to the Torrey Pines State Beach and Reserve.

An aide to Craven said Friday that the money was not a new appropriation, but was actually money left over from another, unsuccessful San Diego County park project that was included in the governor’s proposed budget earlier this year.

“We just wanted to keep the money in San Diego and he turned us down,” said Scott Johnson, the aide. “We asked for a little and got less. We’re disgusted.”

The scenic property, owned by former San Diego Charger Lance Alworth, is at Camino del Mar and Carmel Valley Road and has been openly coveted by environmentalists ever since Alworth announced plans to develop a restaurant and office building there.

Other San Diego County items cut from the budget include:

- $75,000 for the Regional Water Quality Control Board to help coordinate a multi-agency effort to clean up San Diego Bay.

- $55,000 to establish a temporary San Diego field office for the state’s Public Utilities Commission, which will be considering the fate of the proposed San Diego Gas & Electric merger with Southern California Edison.

- $500,000 set aside to help the PUC pay for “public education, understanding and participation” in the proposed merger deliberations. The governor said the PUC’s division of ratepayer advocates should handle such a task. “It would be inappropriate for a government entity to collect funds for the type of informational activities specified in this provision,” Deukmejian wrote in his veto message.

- Two appropriations to UC San Diego, one for $428,000 to research alternatives to animal experiments and the other for $300,000 to conduct aquaculture and fisheries research.

The governor also slashed two-thirds of a proposed $75 million in extra money to go for mental health programs statewide.

In terms of San Diego County, that cut means local mental health programs will receive an estimated $3.2 million instead of the nearly $6 million in extra funds set aside by the Legislature.

But Deukmejian also took steps to help San Diego County--and others that have been traditionally under-funded for mental health programs--in the long run by making sure a special formula is used to help them catch up.

The formula was written into state law three years ago and directs that at least half of all increases in the mental health budget go toward those under-funded counties. But a legislative conference committee, at the behest of Los Angeles lawmakers, changed that language to minimize the so-called equalization.

Deukmejian deleted the conference committee language and restored the special formula that favors the under-funded counties such as San Diego.