McCarthy to Take Daring Step in Drug War : Government: The lieutenant governor’s politically risky proposal would hike the sales tax to fund the battle.

To his right, he looked down on the tiny infant born a drug addict, stricken with syphilis and brain lesions, abandoned and with but a fleeting prayer for a worthwhile life. To his left was another swaddled newborn, also an addict and, at best, with a lifetime of struggle ahead.

As those disturbing visions of a hospital’s critical care ward pushed him onward Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy prepared for the most daring step of his political life--a move with broad, even explosive, political implications for the 1990 elections.

Today, McCarthy plans to propose a half-cent, $1.6-billion-a-year increase in the state sales tax. The ballot initiative would dramatically increase the cash available in California to wage the war on drugs, both for law enforcement and for prevention and rehabilitation. Police funding statewide would be increased by about 12% a year.

Bold and worthwhile intentions aside, however, some Democrats winced in anticipation of the announcement. They fear that McCarthy and his proposition will open the Democratic Party and its 1990 ticket to a familiar attack: That they represent the party of taxing-and-spending.

McCarthy said, however, that he sensed that drugs have grown into such a monstrous social menace that taxpayers will be willing to come up with the $50-a-year per capita to fight back.

“Drug abuse is the most serious threat to the quality of life in this state,” he said. “Drug abuse is tearing apart tens of thousands of families. Political leaders must finally move past the tough-guy rhetoric and do what’s right to protect the public and to save the next generation. . . . This proposal gives everybody a chance to help solve the problem.”

McCarthy, who is running for reelection next year, is the third major statewide candidate to link his candidacy to a ballot proposal.

U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson, Republican candidate for governor, is chairman of a “speedy trials” proposition aimed at the June, 1990, ballot; Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, Democratic candidate for governor, is sponsoring three, including one to close tax “loopholes” for businesses. This would raise $1.7 billion over the next eight years to fight drug abuse. His other proposals deal with the environment and political ethics.

McCarthy, the two-term lieutenant governor and former Speaker of the Assembly, said he resolved to face a tax increase squarely when he first had the unsettling experience of going onto a hospital ward to witness the shivering, underweight and often doomed infants born to cocaine-addicted mothers, the so-called “crack babies.”

Then, McCarthy said, he came across law enforcement leaders who said they are so short-handed in the fight against crime that at times as much as two-thirds of the solid intelligence they gather about drug dealers goes uninvestigated.

“Are we going to continue to think we’re going to tackle this in little tiny increments?” McCarthy asked. “What we’re getting out of politicians is tough rhetoric and no new funding.”

On Tuesday, the eve of his announcement, McCarthy took a short car ride from his downtown Los Angeles office to the Hospital of the Good Samaritan, to look in once again on the somber scene of “crack babies.” He has calculated that 12,000 such infants were born in the state last year, and hospital personnel said that virtually none of them will grow up without problems. The least of the problems will be learning disabilities.

McCarthy said that the average “crack baby” will run up lifetime medical bills of $400,000.

His initiative proposal, which requires 372,178 valid voter signatures to qualify for the November, 1990, ballot, will raise the sales tax by half a cent on the dollar for four years. At the end of that time, California’s new governor would have to make a public report on the effectiveness of the multibillion-dollar effort.

The proposition divides up every dollar of the $1.6 billion of new taxes for specific programs in four categories:

- 40%, or $640 million, would be allocated to law enforcement agencies. Of this, most of it would go straight to police agencies--enough to increase their budgets by about 12% statewide, according to McCarthy’s office. District attorneys and courts would be allocated a smaller share of the funds to handle the caseload.

- 42%, or $672 million, would be divided up for one of the most sweeping anti-drug education efforts ever seriously proposed in the state. Every student in every grade in every school would be exposed to some kind of “appropriate” anti-drug program, McCarthy said. After-school programs to keep kids out of trouble would be increased by $135 million and programs for pre-schoolers in “at-risk” communities would be increased $235 million--both huge expansions. Additionally, the state would undertake a 50-50 partnership with private enterprise to provide jobs for troubled youths.

- 10%, or $160 million, for jails and prisons.

- 8%, or $128 million, would be earmarked to expand efforts to prevent drug abuse among pregnant women, and to help in the care of their addicted children. This would allow for a substantive increase in such programs.

Apart from money, McCarthy’s proposal would outlaw the early release from prison for anyone convicted twice of a serious drug offense.

Proposing an initiative is one thing and obtaining the required signatures to qualify it for the ballot quite another in California politics. McCarthy said he has already identified contributors for two-thirds of the $550,000 budget he believes will be needed. Curiously, McCarthy said most of the commitments he has so far are from Republicans.

The plight of “crack babies” has struck a chord with many in both parties. Wilson has plunged into a battle in Washington to cut spending on congressional newsletters $45 million a year to help in treating the youngsters.

As for the Democrats that will accompany McCarthy in 1990 on the statewide ballot, none has joined up behind his tax increase.

The initiative has been in circulation among would-be backers for some weeks now. A copy was sent to Van de Kamp but he did not reply, McCarthy said. No copy was sent to the other Democratic candidate for governor, former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, whose relations with McCarthy are generally cool.

But some Democratic operatives have seen the proposal. And they are sounding the alarm.

“It’s ticklish for a Democrat to be out there once again calling for more taxes to raise more money to solve a social problem,” said one, who asked to remain anonymous.

Another complained that McCarthy, who declined to take a risk and run for governor this time, was now overreaching and stepping out of bounds for a candidate for a lesser office. “He shopped around and found an issue, but what has fighting drugs got to do with being lieutenant governor?” the Democrat asked.

In the past, the sales tax has been criticized by Democrats as the most “regressive” tax of all--one that requires as much from the working poor as from those better off. But McCarthy said that with a flattening of income tax rates and exemptions from the sales tax for necessities such as food “its not really a regressive tax anymore.”

In addition to this proposal and the business tax “loophole” closing offered by Van de Kamp, Californians face the prospects of two other major tax votes in 1990. In June, voters will decide whether to trigger a 9-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax for transportation. And a huge property tax increase on businesses, an estimated $8 billion to $9 billion a year, is being proposed in another ballot proposition circulated by political consultant Bill Zimmerman and the group Voter Revolt, which was last involved in the Proposition 103 car insurance rate rollback measure.

Zimmerman said Tuesday that there is only a 50-50 chance that his measure would have enough signatures to earn a spot on the June ballot.

BACKGROUND

The basic California sales tax rate of 6 cents on the dollar has not been changed since 1973, according to the state Board of Equalization. In 13 of 58 counties, however, the rate has been increased to 6 1/2 cents or 7 cents via special assessments over the years to pay for local road or jail projects. Orange County voters will decide next month whether to increase rates from 6 to 6 1/2 cents for transportation. In Los Angeles and Riverside counties, the rate is 6 1/2 cents; in San Diego it is 7 cents.