A Boost From Bill Honig

The importance of Bill Honig’s decision to support the June, 1990, ballot measure to raise $18.5 billion in transportation funds and to revise the Gann spending limits cannot be overstated. The state superintendent of public instruction is one of California’s most popular and zealous political leaders. Winning voter approval of the transportation-fiscal plan in next June’s primary election will not be easy. Without Honig’s support it might have been impossible.

Honig’s pledge of support does not guarantee backing from all segments of the education community. Each organization will have to decide on its own. It will be a difficult decision for many, since defeat of the plan would mean more money going to public education under formulas guaranteed by the passage of Proposition 98, the Honig-led school-funding initiative narrowly approved by voters in 1988. One feature of the Gann package revises Proposition 98 so that education’s annual automatic budget increases would not grow quite so rapidly.

But Honig recognizes the vital need for additional spending on other state programs and particularly for the transportation plan to be financed by a 5-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax increase that will grow by a penny a year for four years after that. Honig and others in the education community must realize, too, the risk of political backlash if their own selfish ends were perceived as the cause of defeat for the program. School finance in California still lags behind other states, but has made up considerable ground in this decade.

There was other good news Wednesday in Gov. George Deukmejian’s pledge to legislators to lead the campaign in behalf of the transportation-Gann program, which requires voter approval because it makes changes in the state Constitution. Also, critical parts of the transportation plan dealing with rail transit must be approved in successive $1-billion bond issues in 1990, 1992 and 1994.

The transportation program is far more than just a highway- and rail-construction plan. It also includes a controversial growth-management element that still is a subject of contention between its author, Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), and developers. The commendable goal is to make $3 billion in local transportation assistance contingent on the adoption of congestion-management programs in all urban areas. The programs would require developers to mitigate any additional traffic congestion their projects might generate. The builders claim the requirements for doing that are unworkable and need to be relaxed. Perhaps, but Katz is correct when he says there should be no wholesale change in the concept.

Almost every powerful interest group in California will have to swallow hard over some element in the Gann-transportation plan before accepting the whole package for the overall benefit to California’s future. Deukmejian took a tax increase he didn’t want. Honig gave up some money for schools. And developers must learn to live with growth management, whether this program passes or not. If it does pass, however, California will have a considerably brighter future to develop.