Legislature’s Last Week a Busy One : Major Issues Not Resolved as ’89 Session Draws to Close

State lawmakers begin the final hectic week of their 1989 session today facing a Friday midnight deadline for settlement of such thorny issues as health insurance, overhaul of the $8-billion workers’ compensation system, solid waste management and how to spend millions in new tobacco tax funds.

“We’re right on schedule,” said Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), characteristically unperturbed by the hundreds of bills awaiting legislative action this week.

Bristling from criticism that they have been ineffective in dealing with some of the state’s most pressing social, political and environmental problems, Gov. George Deukmejian and legislative leaders several months ago set out to make 1989 one of their most productive years in recent memory.

In June, they fashioned a long-range $18.5-billion transportation improvement program, worked out a compromise to lift the voter-approved spending limit that has created havoc with government budgets and approved legislation implementing a long-term public school financing plan.

Then, hoping to capitalize on that success, they filled their legislative plates with a challenging array of bills dealing with some of the state’s most nettlesome problems, putting off until the final week most of the key decisions.

Now, with time running out in the session, it may be more than they can handle.

One of the most ambitious bills, the top priority of the Speaker, is a plan to provide health benefits to many of the 5 million Californians who have no insurance. Under Brown’s proposal, businesses with five or more full-time employees would be required to provide coverage to their workers.

The measure has been resisted by business groups, which have complained that private companies, particularly small ones, cannot afford to shoulder the burden of providing health insurance for those who do not have it. In response, Brown has been searching for funding--perhaps in the form of a tax credit or a share of tobacco tax revenues--that would soften the blow.

“I think I’m going to have to have a way in which to reduce the hostility of the employers in order to get the governor’s signature,” Brown said. “But I think we can achieve that.”

Another bill would revamp the state’s long-troubled $8-billion system for compensating injured workers. The state program is the most expensive in the nation for employers but provides benefits to workers that are among the lowest.

The legislation has been the subject of months of negotiations among Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) and representatives of Republican lawmakers, the governor, insurers, employers and organized labor. Public employees, lawyers and doctors have opposed the legislation.

Although Deukmejian last week charged that Margolin had amended the bill so much that it bears little resemblance to a version of the legislation he had supported months ago, the legislator maintains that the bill is very close to a form the governor could sign.

Another series of pending bills would promote recycling and toughen state regulation of the state’s waste management system. The proposed state program, which has been tentatively approved by the governor and legislative leaders, would replace the much-maligned California Waste Management Board with a new full-time board. It would also promote recycling of trash by requiring local governments to reduce the amount of solid waste going into landfills by 50% within a decade.

Among all the unsettled issues, the governor and legislative leaders seem to be the most optimistic about reaching agreement on solid waste. “The prospects for it are fairly good at this point,” Deukmejian told reporters last week. The Assembly Speaker went further, saying: “The waste thing is put to bed. We’re in the process of drafting the bill.”

Lawmakers are also working on legislation to implement Proposition 99, the tobacco tax increase approved last year by voters. The proposal would pump hundreds of millions of dollars in new tobacco tax receipts into a variety of local health programs to help poor Californians who cannot afford medical care.

Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg (D-Sacramento), chairman of the conference committee fashioning the Proposition 99 legislation, said negotiators “are very close to agreement” on a complex bill that would earmark most of the $600 million a year in new tobacco tax revenues to programs providing health care for the indigent.

A few stumbling blocks remain, however. One issue still to be decided is how much of the tobacco tax money will be used in a television and advertising campaign. Some lawmakers are saying cigarette industry lobbyists are putting up a ferocious battle to keep money from going into a mass media anti-smoking advertising campaign.

Hoping to clean up their own image, lawmakers are also working on legislation to establish tighter ethical controls on state and local officeholders and candidates for office. Among other things, the legislation they are considering would ban honorariums for lawmakers, restrict gifts and enact tougher conflict-of-interest laws. In exchange, legislators want to create a special commission to set legislative salaries.

A more sweeping ethics bill than the limited measure before the Legislature has already been shelved. Differences between Senate and Assembly versions of the ethics bills that are still alive will be addressed by a two-house conference committee this week.

High on Deukmejian’s list of priorities is a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow convicts to work for private businesses. The plan is patterned after a program run by the California Youth Authority that puts inmates to work assemblying computers, packaging utensils for a fast-food franchise and taking airline ticket reservations at off hours. The idea is to use inmates at money-making jobs that will help offset costs of their incarceration and pay restitution to their victims.

The prison worker proposal is strongly opposed by labor unions who fear the inmates will take away jobs from workers in private industry. Resigned to likely defeat in the Legislature, Deukmejian is already talking about organizing an initiative campaign to take his case to the voters on the November, 1990, ballot.

And to further complicate things, lawmakers still hope to restore $24 million cut by Deukmejian from family planning programs, deal with the future of ecologically sensitive Mono Lake, consider a proposal requiring a waiting period for all gun purchases and act on a Brown bill to create a low-cost automobile insurance policy that would be available to California’s poorest residents.

After weeks of happy talk about how well the governor and Legislature were getting along, the strain of fashioning so many compromises on so many bills in such a short period of time has begun to show. Deukmejian was testy at a news conference last week, saying special interests appeared to be “winning” the battle to block individual bills that they opposed. Brown pointed the finger back at the governor. “He’s vetoed four or five of my bills, but I don’t hold a press conference and bellyache,” Brown said.

The next day, Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno lost his temper during a conference committee hearing on the tobacco tax legislation, accusing a Democratic colleague of “stupidity” for pressing an issue that threatened the delicate compromise that was coming together.

Maddy, who has been meeting weekly with the governor and other legislative leaders, said, “Time may have caught up with us.”

But the Speaker was more optimistic. Brown noted that lawmakers and the governor are “about to close” an agreement on the solid waste issue and are nearing accord on several other matters.

The Democratic legislator said he expects to be able to complete talks on proposed constitutional amendments involving lawmaker ethics that will be submitted to the voters. He also expects lawmakers to agree on the bill to implement Proposition 99, the tobacco tax measure.

“That’s fairly good,” Brown said. “Then if we really do a slam dunk on my health insurance measure, whether we do workers’ compensation or auto insurance or not, it still will have been a spectacular session.”