Another Clunker in Sacramento : Legislative session didn’t deliver enough goods

Another California legislative session is history, again without so much as one performance in sound public policy that anyone could call outstanding and keep a straight face.

Failing to repeat a championship season happens often enough in professional sports. But making government deliver--building roads and transit systems, running first-rate schools, balancing the budget and providing adequate health and other services for the poor who cannot live without them--is no game.

A year ago, the session’s final days shimmered with achievement, performed for the most part in an atmosphere of civility by legislators and a governor who seemed finally and fully aware that managing public services for the public good is a state government’s only reason toexist.

Exhibit A last year was a package of highway and transit improvements with a new way of calculating limits on state spending. Not only did Gov. George Deukmejian and Democratic leaders of the Legislature negotiate the package, they persuaded voters to approve it in June.

This year, relations between the two branches of government and the two political parties returned to their California variation on Thomas Hobbes--nasty, brutish and much too long.

Deukmejian and the Legislature agreed on a budget only after a six-week stalemate that forced many state employees to miss paydays and welfare recipients to miss meals. A state earthquake insurance program for homeowners and an oil spill cleanup plan are successes, but there were far more failures.

Efforts to construct a health insurance program for 5 million Californians who are not covered by any health plan failed. Not only did an effort to create a low-cost automobile insurance program for the 25% of state motorists who now drive without insurance break down, but a law requiring motorists to carry insurance will expire at the end of the year because it was not extended.

Sacramento’s standard box score probably would count as victories the decisions to put more than $3 billion worth of bond issues on the November ballot, for good causes ranging from aid for first-time home buyers to $30 million for child-care centers.

But that makes a total of $5 billion in bond propositions in November on top of $4 billion approved in June. A rule of thumb on bond issues is that California probably can float $2-billion worth a year without taking any risk at all on flooding the market. Anything above that needs careful study. Pushing off on voters the burden of making that sort of decision hardly belongs in the win column.

Finally, Deukmejian and the Legislature teamed up to leave California school budgets in limbo, because they cannot be sure of getting the full 4.76% cost-of-living increase that Proposition 98 says the schools are entitled to. The Legislature voted $220 million to handle the increase, but Deukmejian impounded it.

Based on a legal opinion that the Legislature is right, Controller Gray Davis is writing checks to schools for the full amount. But not all legal opinions stand up in court, so cashing the checks could be a gamble.

Although the California Legislature has refused to adopt no-fault automobile insurance, it has no qualms about adopting a no-fault position on its failures. It held over some important issues, members said after adjournment, because any new governor will be easier to work with than Deukmejian, who is not running again.

Deukmejian has been stubborn and wrong often enough to fit the requirement for a fall guy. But a new governor is not going to sweep into office dragging great bundles of new cash, and the state’s many major problems will not melt away. It does not sound much like a script for outstanding future performances. We shall see.