Budget Deal Stalls on Key Tax Boost : Finances: Legislature gives tentative approval to $55-billion spending plan. Agreement on measures to cut expenditures and increase revenues is still needed.

Nearing the end of a prolonged stalemate, a reluctant Legislature gave tentative approval to a $55-billion state budget Saturday, but was delaying passage of key tax-increase and spending-reduction measures needed to make it work.

In the Assembly, worn-out lawmakers approved the budget bill with a 55-14 vote at 12:51 a.m. Saturday, seven hours after they convened. Assembly leaders, however, were having trouble rounding up votes for key tax bills. The Senate took up the spending plan Saturday afternoon and gave it tentative approval on a 27-8 vote. But a vote to make it final was held up while lawmakers awaited the outcome of votes on other bills in the budget package.

Once Gov. George Deukmejian gets the budget and all its various companion bills, he is expected to sign it and announce his vetoes Monday or Tuesday.

Approval of the budget came slowly, with legislative leaders in the Assembly forced to build the needed 54-vote, two-thirds majorities almost vote by vote. Many of the key votes failed on initial roll calls by two or three votes, but legislative leaders said they were confident of winning approval of the entire package.

The budget plan’s $2.7 billion in proposed budget cuts angered Democrats and its $843 million in tax increases chilled GOP enthusiasm.

“It’s not easy. There is a lot of grumbling. People are holding their noses and voting for this budget,” said Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles).

Down the hall, Senate Majority Leader Barry Keene (D-Benecia) was calling the spending plan “a love-hate budget.”

“We love that it is a reality, but we hate the reality that it is,” he said.

Action on the budget package came a record 28 days after the start of the 1990-91 fiscal year and 43 days after the Legislature’s own constitutional deadline for passing a budget. Since the state lacks the legal authority to pay its bills until the budget is signed by the governor, the only bills that have been paid have been those required under court order. More than 5,000 state employees have been without a paycheck since July 13.

The spending plan, forged during weeks of meetings between Deukmejian and legislative leaders, leaves state financial support for public schools intact. But it rolls back spending on nearly all other state programs, falling particularly hard on counties and the poor, sick and disadvantaged served by state-funded health and human service programs.

The Legislature was expected to directly approve roughly $2.3 billion in spending reductions through the budget and other legislation. The governor was expected to veto at least $420 million more when he gets the budget plan.

Balancing off the cuts will be $843 million in tax and fee increases that will boost levies on corporations, state university students, campers in state parks and car owners moving into California from other states, to name a few of those who will feel the reach of the legislation.

Part of the package includes legislative reauthorization of state prisons planned for downtown Los Angeles and Lancaster. Deukmejian said he wold not sign the main budget bill unless the Legislature sent him the reauthorization. That normally would be a routine matter but took on heavy political overtones because of the power of Los Angeles lawmakers opposed to the downtown site. The bill was approved by the Senate, 21 to 10.

The package also contains a far-reaching measure that would mandate automatic spending cuts of up to 4% in future years when revenues drop below expected expenditures. The roots of this year’s problem lie in a $3.6-billion gap that exists between tax receipts and various legal demands for state expenditures.

The series of tough votes began Friday night and continued through Saturday, complicated by continuing ill will between Republican and Democratic lawmakers and an usually high number of absences caused by vacationing legislators.

Frantic for votes, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) reeled in vacationing lawmakers from as far away as London. Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-West Los Angeles) left the Capitol early Saturday and, chased down in Los Angeles by Brown, flew back. Assemblyman Gerald R. Eaves (D-Rialto) interrupted his honeymoon to return to the Capitol to vote. Assemblyman Sam Farr (D-Carmel) was said to be on his way back from London, as was Assemblyman Tom Bane (D-Tarzana). Assemblyman Willard H. Murray Jr. (D-Paramount) reportedly was on his back back to the Capitol from Bermuda.

Votes were so important that Brown roused two lawmakers who had been excused because of illness. Assemblyman Sal Cannella (D-Modesto), hampered by a bad case of kidney stones, struggled to the floor with the help of a sergeant at arms. The Speaker said Democratic Assemblyman Elihu M. Harris, who had been given the day off because of an illness, was being fetched from Oakland.

Republicans could have cast so-called “courtesy” votes for their sick or vacationing Democratic colleagues, but they refused. Assemblyman Charles W. Quackenbush (R-Saratoga), a tax increase opponent who voted against all the tax and budget bills, said: “The Democrats have a lot of people on vacation and I think it’s only fair that they be required to show up in person and claim their victory.”

Meanwhile, Deukmejian joined the hunt for votes, calling legislators personally or giving the chore to two top aides--Michael R. Frost, his chief of staff, and Allan S. Zaremberg, head of his legislative unit.

Deukmejian was forced to play hardball later in the day Saturday. When Assembly lawmakers balked at passing key parts of the package, including a bill that would raise $560 million by conforming state tax codes to federal tax law, the governor sent a brief letter to the Speaker saying he would not sign the budget until he got the tax bills.

The Assembly, before it recessed about 1:30 a.m., approved nine of the companion bills. Assembly lawmakers were back in session Saturday morning and began voting on six bills. By 5 p.m., they had managed to pass only two additional bills--a proposal to save $477 million by suspending for one year a contribution to the State Teachers’ Retirement System and a measure cutting county government grants and raising various fees aimed at saving another $200 million.

The Senate also was voting on numerous budget-related bills but none of the votes were conclusive, though Senate leaders said they were confident they ultimately would pass.

The mounting toll of physical exhaustion, political wrangling and pressure from interest groups left no one smiling Saturday.

“This budget was the best we could produce,” said Sen. Ken Maddy, the Republican Senate leader from Fresno who helped craft the plan. He cited what he called a fair balance between cuts and tax increases.

GOP Assembly Leader Ross Johnson of La Habra said producing the budget and all the companion bills was as satisfying as inflicting physical pain: “If you go in your garage and pound your hand with a torque wrench, you are satisfied when you stop, OK? Nobody is happy.”

Republicans argued that because the budget is balanced by tax increases and maneuvers such as delaying pension fund payments, they predict they will have the whole problem handed back to them next year.

Some GOP lawmakers said they felt betrayed by Deukmejian, who will turn over the keys to the governor’s office early next year and retire from public life after his second term.

“This isn’t the courageous reform legacy of a retiring governor,” Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) said during the floor debate. “It is a cowardly escape plan to get out of town and leave the next governor with the kind of problem we failed to solve this year.”

Short of votes to pass the budget package, Democrats were forced to plead with GOP lawmakers to vote for the governor’s spending plan, but the pleas generally came with a political barb attached. “Vote yes. It stinks, but vote yes. Give George Deukmejian his legacy,” said Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-La Mesa).

The $55-billion budget was actually the second budget the Senate approved this month. On July 10, the Senate put together a bipartisan coalition that approved an earlier version of the budget. But it immediately ran into a brick wall in the Assembly, where Democrats denounced its proposed $1.7 billion in cuts and Republicans fought the $1.3 billion in tax increase proposals that went with it.

The final version that went back to the Senate contained far more cuts, and fewer revenues, although about $700 million of the so-called cuts are illusory because the money savings come about as the result of reduced state contributions to three state public employee pension funds and will have to be made up in later years.

Times staff writers Carl Ingram and Max Boot contributed to this story.