CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : Feinstein and Wilson Sidestep Budget Crisis

Both are running campaigns touting their courageous leadership, and both have boasted of their prowess in managing governments. But Pete Wilson and Dianne Feinstein have sidestepped the looming state budget crisis like quarterbacks with bad knees dodging onrushing linemen.

As the Legislature and governor suffer paroxysms over the politically difficult topic of raising taxes and cutting government services, the gubernatorial candidates have discussed their druthers only grudgingly, and in cautious generalities.

Each is not quite sure that raising taxes is the way to go. Each is insistent that cutbacks be made. And each has stubbornly refused to delineate what cutbacks they would favor, if they were in charge--which, of course, they wish to be.

“If you’re going to govern, you ought to tell people how you’re going to govern,” said Assembly Ways and Means Chairman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), who has tried to no avail to interest the candidates in the budget crisis.

“I’ve heard nothing specific from either.”

Republican Wilson, in an interview last week, repeatedly refused to say where he would cut back state services--or increase taxes--to accommodate the deficit.

“In the first place, I am not in charge,” he said in response to persistent questioning. “We have a governor who is in charge and what he needs is not advice--he needs votes.”

The senator backed away from a call by Republican Sen. Ken Maddy, a Wilson supporter, for a $729-million tax increase that would form the basis of a budget-balancing agreement.

“I am very, very skeptical,” Wilson said. “I’d like to see the spending cuts.”

Wilson dodged a query about whether he was suggesting that it was possible to resolve the $3.6-billion deficit by cuts alone--without tax increases.

“I think that you will see, I hope next week, a resolution of that,” he said, adding, “I hope that they will be successful. They’re running out of time.”

Like Wilson, Feinstein has focused little public attention on the troublesome issue of tax increases and cutbacks. Her involvement in the budget deficit crisis has been limited to a quick visit to Sacramento on June 14, during which she visited in private with Democratic lawmakers and emerged to say she was prepared to act as an informal adviser.

She said then that she was “not entirely” supportive of a package then making the rounds that would have increased taxes by $2.3 billion and staved off the rest of the deficit in budget cuts.

“My general thrust is you’ve got to cut wherever you can, and I think you then have to reassess the situation,” she said.

Asked about specific targets, Feinstein said, “I’ll say more on that later.”

But her spokeswoman, Dee Dee Myers, now says it is “unlikely” that Feinstein will endorse any specific moves.

“It’s going to be a moot issue,” she said, referring to the fact that the state crisis must be solved before the November election. “That’s what we elect these people to do.”

Myers said Feinstein could not be specific because as a candidate she was operating in a “universe of limited information.”

“She’s not privy to all of the insider information,” Myers said. “We don’t have the resources of the Assembly Office of Research and the budget office. Preparing a state budget is a broad and complex task.”

But Vasconcellos said each of the candidates has been offered all the budget information available. “That’s an excuse, not a response,” he said.

The only candidate to offer a budget plan this political season was Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, and his resounding loss to Feinstein in the Democratic primary may offer a clue to why neither of the remaining two candidates has stepped forward with specific solutions.

“Given the result in my race, perhaps that’s the best politics,” he said wryly.

But Van de Kamp drew a distinction between the kind of negative political fallout that greeted Walter Mondale’s 1984 statement that taxes might have to be raised and the impact a specific statement on state budgetary matters would have on Wilson and Feinstein.

“I don’t think I got hurt on the issue,” he said. “I don’t think this would hurt either one of them very much.”

“It would be valuable to have both candidates say something about it and give us an idea how they would behave,” he added. “It’s just too easy to say it’s none of our business and we don’t have control.”

Van de Kamp, who proclaimed without much hyperbole that he had been more specific about budgetary matters than any gubernatorial candidate in memory, proposed boosting the state’s top tax rates from 9.3% to 11% for those making more than $100,000 a year. All together, he detailed almost $2.3 billion in new revenues.

The attorney general also suggested more than $1.3 billion in budget cutbacks, chiefly by making a 5% cut in state administrative costs and restoring the $1.3-billion budget reserve over two years rather than one year.

To be sure, Van de Kamp’s plan was criticized as unworkable by some legislators skeptical of its chance of passage, and the attorney general himself acknowledges that neither Wilson nor Feinstein can directly affect the state budget choices this year.

While dancing around budget specifics, both remaining candidates are trying to gauge the impact of the sharpening state and national debate over how to cut budget deficits, a discussion which is increasingly bipartisan. In addition to Republican Maddy’s call for increased state taxes, President Bush recently was forced to abandon his campaign promise that he would not raise taxes and concur that some increases are necessary.

Wilson insists that the matter will not hurt him, despite the fact that he could be in the position of voting on federal tax increases at the same time that he is labeling Feinstein a “tax-and-spend Democrat.”

Voters, he said, “don’t have any trouble” equating Democrats with taxation.

But at the same time, Wilson drew a distinction between increased income taxes--which he said he does not support--and increases in fees. The semantic difference has traditionally been one emphasized by politicians faced with dire fiscal realities.

Feinstein’s spokeswoman Myers reflected general Democratic thought that the break in Republican ranks over taxes will take the issue away from GOP candidates.

“It muddies up the issue,” she said. “There’s a sense with the Bush thing in particular that while the Republicans run around promising not to raise taxes, when push comes to shove they’re probably going to raise taxes anyway.”