There Has to Be a Better Way : Patched-Together State Budget--Only 27 Days Late

With their Friday budget agreement, Gov. George Deukmejian and legislative leaders patched together a government they had been threatening to tear apart for 27 days. As in so many years past, what made it happen had less to do with hospitals, hungry children and a functioning court system than ego, party image and a whiff of what history might say if they failed.

As in so many other years, they also did it the easy way. They raised some fees and cut some programs. They raised $560 million by changing the way business taxes are calculated, and they will get a like amount by paying bills late and slowing the flow of money into pension funds. But the crucial next step--restructuring tax and spending laws so that Sacramento can avoid the histrionics of artificial economic crises every budget year--is left for another time.

Deukmejian, who will not run for reelection, did manage to leave the Democratic Legislature something to remember him by. In a last bid for honors as skinflint of the decade, he announced that his price for a deal was a law letting the state finance director lop dollars from any program--without regard to other laws--whenever the normal budget process broke down.

Whether it was a serious proposal or a bargaining hammer, it didn’t work the way he intended. Democrats did agree to a “trigger mechanism” that could wipe out perhaps $200 million, but that’s not enough to balance a budget that is not likely ever to dip below $50 billion again.

What the governor got in exchange is approval of two Los Angeles County prisons he badly wants built. Those are in separate legislation, not the budget itself, but they still will be hard to swallow for Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) and others who fought just as hard to block them. Those who oppose the prisons will take some comfort in knowing that the construction decision will be up to some future governor, not Deukmejian.

Democrats can claim that cuts in welfare, family care, child abuse and other programs they champion were not as deep as they might have been. They also resisted cuts by the governor in education funds earmarked under Proposition 98.

Aside from the meager political credit that might be wrung out of these so-called victories, was this latest demonstration of budget making as door-to-door combat of any value to anyone in California? Certainly not to taxpayers. Certainly not to state employees who missed paydays or those Californians who live below the poverty level, who missed meals or were turned away from health care.

Nothing of substance changed in the final hours of negotiation that could not have changed months ago. The starting point for the last round of talks was a bill that Senate President Pro Tem. David Roberti (D-Los Angeles) and Sen. Ken Maddy (R-Fresno) hand-carried through the Senate more than two weeks ago.

With one exception, the episode does not even offer lessons about how to prevent Sacramento’s repeating the sorry performance. At least nothing about the careers of either major candidate for governor suggests that combat over the budget will be as intense in the next few years.

But what California needs is a process strong enough to take the starch out of governors and legislators looking for a fight rather than a budget. Maybe there should be a mechanism that blocks the pay and allowances of the principals starting, say, two weeks before the budget deadline. That may be excessive, but right now it sure seems like the right place to start.