Deukmejian Singles Out Honig in Counterattack Against Critics

Lashing out at an old political adversary, Gov. George Deukmejian accused state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig on Thursday of not keeping a promise to voters to use Proposition 98 money for significant reduction of class sizes.

Deukmejian criticized Honig at length while responding to the school chief’s outspoken criticism of the governor’s veto of $480 million in education funds from the $55.7-billion state budget he signed last week.

Honig has called Deukmejian’s actions “spite cuts . . . made out of anger and vindictiveness” because educators pressured the Legislature into resisting the governor’s attempts to suspend provisions of Proposition 98, which guarantees public schools at least 40% of the state General Fund.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dianne Feinstein joined in the anti-Deukmejian chorus on Wednesday, charging that the governor’s actions were “mean-spirited” and “punitive.” She vowed, if elected governor, to restore $462 million of the vetoed school funds.

Deukmejian’s advisers have been worried about the rhetorical beatings he has been taking, not only concerning the school-fund vetoes but the entire budget negotiations last month. The Legislature went four weeks into the new fiscal year without passing a state budget, and the governor has been accused by Democrats and Republicans alike of lacking leadership early in the battle.

The governor finally acceded to his advisers’ urgings on Thursday and held a press conference to begin trying to tell his side of the budget story, especially regarding school money. “Rightly or wrongly, he’s been hurt,” conceded one longtime Deukmejian strategist.

What the governor did in signing the budget was to reduce from 4.8% to 3% a cost-of-living increase voted by the Legislature for elementary and secondary schools. But he set aside $264 million of these vetoed funds to finance substantial reductions in class sizes for high school English, math, science and social studies courses.

“What we’re trying to do is simply keep faith with the public and reduce class sizes,” Deukmejian told reporters. “I’m trying to do something in terms of using this money in the classroom itself--and not having virtually all of it go out in salaries for teachers and administrators. . . .”

He said that when Honig and the state’s education Establishment sold voters on Proposition 98 two years ago, they argued that the money was needed, in part, for class-size reduction. Indeed, a ballot argument signed by Honig emphasized that California ranked “dead last on average class size.”

Beyond that, Deukmejian contended that Honig last January asked the governor only for a 3% increase in school funds, the same as ultimately was approved. “Now, he’s out making all kinds of intemperate statements,” Deukmejian said.

In a one-two punch aimed at the schools chief, state Sen. Becky Morgan (R-Los Altos Hills) later Thursday showed the Senate Budget Committee some TV commercials sponsored by Proposition 98 supporters during the 1988 campaign. The commercials included references to the need for reductions in class size.

The senator said voters approved the ballot measure “on the assumption and expectation” class sizes would be reduced, but “we’ve done nothing in the past two years to reduce class size.”

Honig, who also testified before the committee, said the Deukmejian-Morgan “argument that this measure was sold just on class size” was “pretty thin.”

Actually, Morgan last year won passage of legislation to reduce class sizes in line with the way Deukmejian now advocates. But the reduction was to be financed with surplus state budget revenues, and this year there were none.

Meanwhile, Assembly Democrats on Thursday moved toward a showdown with Deukmejian on his education fund vetoes. They scheduled a floor vote for Monday on legislation that would restore the school cost-of-living increases back to 4.8%.

In his press conference, Deukmejian also said that Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the resulting havoc in the international oil market again showed the need to plan “for environmentally safe” offshore drilling. President Bush has declared a moratorium on oil drilling off most of the California coast, a position supported strongly by both Feinstein and U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson, the Republican gubernatorial candidate.

But Deukmejian argued that if the United States were free of the need for foreign oil, “the world would be a safer place because dictators like Saddam Hussein would no longer loom so large on the national stage.”