California’s Tarnished Reputation as a National Trend-Setter : Governance: Prop. 111 will double the gas tax? Big deal. The tax is now 47th-lowest in the U.S.; California ranks dead last in transportation spending.

For decades, people have been saying California’s today is every other state’s tomorrow. History says they’re right--from suburban sprawl to anti-growth hysteria, Disneyland to fervid environmentalism, ‘60s student radicalism to drive-by shootings.

Then there was the massive taxpayer revolt that erupted with California’s Proposition 13 in 1978 and, in short order, invaded half the states. The same revolt, borne on Ronald Reagan’s rhetorical wings and George Bush’s lips, later turned tax hostility into a national phobia.

Now national eyes are on California as it prepares, June 5, to vote on Proposition 111--a big, phased-in gas-tax hike and lifting of the 1979-era Gann limit to allow the extra revenue to be spent on transportation.

If Californians are really prepared to up their taxes a bit, perhaps governors, legislatures, electorates across the country will not be far behind. As fiscal bad news is pushing official Washington toward a tax boost, political pundits are telling us that Capitol Hill politicians and the President are hanging on the California result to see how far they dare go.

Maybe California’s vote is that significant. Perhaps the political tea-leaf readers in 49 other capitals and Washington will jump after a Golden State leap.

Before you buy this theory, look this theoretical gift horse in the mouth. Proposition 111 may have Gov. George Deukmejian and the California political Establishment, right to left, agreeing that the state is fast strangling on its own growth. But it is nothing revolutionary. All it would do is move California gas taxes from 9 cents a gallon--now the 47th-lowest in the country--to 18 cents a gallon over the next five years.

Big Deal. Here is this mighty mega-state, with an economy bigger than all but six or seven other nations across the globe, a citadel of aerospace, high technology, mighty agribusiness and entertainment, said to be poised to lead us into a 21st Century of burgeoning Pacific trade.

Check under the glitz, however, and you find California has raised its gas tax a measly 2 cents since 1963. Allow for inflation. Then consider that between 1966 and 1986, California transportation spending declined 35%, while population soared 42% and personal income 103%.

Since 1966, according to the California Transportation Commission, the number of cars on California roads have doubled; miles traveled on highways have increased 129%. Yet California ranks dead last among the 50 states in per-capita spending for transportation.

What’s the price of all this? Californians, says Deukmejian, each year waste 1.2 billion hours and 750 million gallons of gas while stuck in traffic. Traffic tie-ups may well double by 2000, with the average motorist wasting an estimated $3,498 yearly and sitting in traffic the equivalent of seven days a year.

So why should the rest of the nation ogle when Deukmejian starts campaigning for a gas tax? Or when 100-plus statewide organizations, from the AFL-CIO to the California Taxpayers Assn. to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, come out for Proposition 111?

In any coherent, well-led state, they’d have coalesced a decade ago to sell taxpayers on the dire necessity of added funding. California is no longer a great university- and public-works builder, a shining model for the rest of the nation. It’s a laggard. And if it refuses to shape up, fast, its vaunted economic strength and quality of life will be deteriorating as we enter the next century.

Given the facts, you’d think a towering majority of Californians would be ready to endorse Proposition 111. They aren’t. Polls show the measure leading, but by only a few tenuous points. It could well fail, even though advocates have raised $5 million, and it has no organized opposition.

Millions of Golden State voters still seem hooked on a “you-can-have-it-all-for-nothing” philosophy of government. Or to have developed a dangerous distrust of their own state government. Respondents told Los Angeles Times poll-takers that their “greatest concern” about Proposition 111 wasn’t the gas tax itself, but that Sacramento wouldn’t spend the money “wisely.”

Who’s to say that the Proposition 13 and Reagan anti-government talk were passing fancies? Now we seem to be a whole nation of wallet zippers, government haters, against our collective self-interest. Thanks, California.

There’s one silver lining: “Roads, roads, roads” is not the Proposition 111 message. Deukmejian, who once scorned “rail transit and other exotic forms of alternative transportation,” now boasts how Proposition 111 and a companion measure for transit would “provide commuters with alternatives such as rail transit and car- and van-pool programs.”

Robert K. Best, chief of Caltrans, says billions of the new funds would go into “flexible congestion relief” and alternatives to adding more and more freeway lanes. Sponsors are telling Californians that a sizable chunk of the new gas-tax money will go to such advances as synchronized traffic signals, freeway ramp meters and electronic highway-message signs.

So a wisp of California’s wonderful inventiveness lives on. What if this one-time El Dorado climbs out of its anti-tax trench and works to solve gridlock without border-to-border asphalt? Then maybe the rest of us will start listening again.