Schools’ Aid Called Pivotal for Tax Plan

A bipartisan effort to double the state’s gasoline tax and change the constitutional spending limit could be jeopardized by the continued neutrality of California educators, whose support should have been secured before the compromise was completed, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) said Tuesday.

Brown said educators, whose clout with the electorate he described as “awesome,” were holding out for an “insignificant” concession as negotiators pieced the package together last month. The failure to obtain their endorsement could undermine the gas tax proposal’s chances when it goes before the voters next June, he said.

But another participant in the budget talks, Sen. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove), said the concession that Brown favored would have been seen as a major capitulation by others in the negotiations who were at odds with the education groups.

Brown described the request--for schools to be assured of a slowly increasing portion of the state budget--as so minor that it was “almost to the point of being symbolic.”

“In my view it was an inexpensive price to pay and an inexpensive request to grant,” Brown said at a news conference. “Some of the folks in the room couldn’t get themselves to do that.”

As a result, the educators--teachers, administrators and school board members--have remained neutral on the constitutional amendment that would raise the state spending limit and trigger a 9-cent-a-gallon increase in the gasoline tax to help fund an $18.5-billion expansion of the state’s transportation network.

The ballot measure also would modify Proposition 98, the voter-approved initiative that guaranteed schools a certain amount of the state budget, but has since been criticized for taking money away from transportation and health and welfare programs.

Without the enthusiastic support of educators, Brown and others fear, parents who supported Proposition 98 might view the new proposal as harmful to schools and vote against it. Brown said the educators, including the 212,000-member California Teachers Assn., may yet prevail as the referendum nears.

“They are certainly a drag on the effort just by sitting on their hands,” Brown said of the education groups. “It is my view that as you get close to the election and it becomes clear that a certain segment of the population is critical to your success, you will tend to address that population’s needs.”

But Garamendi, author of the constitutional amendment, said business groups, state employees and lobbyists for the University of California and the California State University system would never agree to give primary and secondary schools and community colleges what they wanted. The change could have amounted to about $1 billion more for schools over the next seven years.

“That’s a major issue,” Garamendi said. “That won’t be changed.”

Brown, in other comments, pledged to try to restore $24 million that Gov. George Deukmejian cut from the state family planning budget. Brown said the expenditure would save the state money in the long run by reducing costs from unwanted pregnancies and births.

“That is a cut that makes no sense at all,” he said.

Brown also declared confidently that no proposal to further restrict abortion rights in California could win passage in the Legislature.

“If you’re talking about restricting abortions to (cases of) rape, incest, if you’re talking about interfering with choice now protected by the right of privacy, I don’t believe there is a committee in my house where a majority of the members would support that, and I know there are not 41 votes on the floor,” Brown said.

In the 1990 elections, Brown said, some pro-choice lawmakers might be made “uncomfortable” by anti-abortion protests staged by “crazy people” such as those involved in Operation Rescue, the nationwide effort to blockade abortion clinics. But Brown predicted that pro-choice legislators would prevail, perhaps with the help of Hollywood celebrities campaigning in their districts.

“You will see them (celebrities) moving out into the districts to increase the comfort level of those of us who are pro-choice where we are under siege by the right-wing nutty mentality who are out there,” he said.

Times staff writer William Trombley contributed to this article.