Feud Between Honig and Deukmejian Escalates : Politics: The State Board of Education moves to strip schools chief of control over Education Department’s budget. Honig says he’s being ‘bushwhacked.’

The continuing political feud between Gov. George Deukmejian and state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig escalated last week when the State Board of Education, made up entirely of appointees by the governor, moved to strip Honig of his control over the Department of Education’s $110-million budget.

The 10-member board took the first steps Friday to increase its staff and hire its own lawyer, in an effort to keep a closer eye on Honig and his staff. And the board also wants to see all bulletins, directives and other paper work before Honig sends them to the state’s 1,000 school districts.

Board President Joseph D. Carrabino denied that the moves had anything to do with the continuing rancor between the Republican governor and the Democratic schools chief or with the recent battle between the two over the 1990-91 education budget.

Carrabino, a professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Management, said in an interview that the board acted because “we’re treated like an advisory group” by Honig. “We’re not involved in any of the major decision-making.”

Carrabino said he has been “frustrated” by this relationship since joining the board three years ago and that the state Constitution and state law give the board authority that Honig has been unwilling to let it exercise.

But other board members, speaking anonymously, said Carrabino was making limited progress in his efforts to persuade his colleagues to curtail Honig’s power until the recent bitter exchanges between the superintendent and Deukmejian over the budget.

“I think it smacks of politics,” Honig said in an interview. “They didn’t tell us anything about it. They bushwhacked us.” He complained that major changes are usually proposed well in advance but that he knew nothing about these until the day before the board met.

He blamed Carrabino, who he said “has been setting this up for quite awhile” and took advantage of the especially harsh current feelings between the governor’s office and the schools’ chief to carry it out.

Honig noted that the board turned down a request to wait a month before making what he called “an historic change in the relationship” with the superintendent.

“Clearly, something else is going on here,” he stated.

But Honig said most of the board’s actions were “either illegal or unconstitutional” and that he does not intend to pay attention to them unless forced to do so by the courts or the Legislature.

“The statutes say I’m the one who runs the department,” he added.

The board passed resolutions calling for:

* The board, not the superintendent, to adopt the department’s annual budget, which is about $110 million. This includes about $50 million in state money from the General Fund and about $46 million in federal funds. However, the state portion was reduced by more than $13 million by Deukmejian’s latest budget cuts.

“They don’t have that authority,” Honig contended.

* The board to appoint a deputy superintendent of public instruction and three associate superintendents, one of whom would be a general counsel to offer independent legal advice to the board. To pay for these positions, and for a variety of other changes, the board has requested a budget increase from $566.5 million this year to $927.4 million in 1991-92.

“They’re trying to create an independent management group but that’s not in the law,” Honig said.

* “All advisories, guidelines, bulletins, memoranda or other documents relating to policy, procedures, programs and issues . . . (to) be reviewed and approved by the board prior to distribution to schools. . . .”

Such a change is needed, Carrabino said, because Honig and his assistants issue “underground regulations” that board members don’t see before they are in effect.

“That’s not in the law and it’s impractical,” Honig replied. “Do they really want to see every piece of paper that flows from this office? Do they have time to read all that? They don’t read all the stuff they get now.”

The superintendent said he has involved board members in “all the major tenets of the reform process”--curriculum change, textbook upgrading, improvements in teacher training and more.

But he said “the board will pay a heavy price for this,” referring to the effort to reduce his authority. “I have involved them in a lot more than I really had to, but if they want to be formal and do it all by statutes, they’ll end up with a reduced role,” not an expanded one.

Carrabino said the board’s next step will be to turn its resolutions into regulations. When the board tries to implement those regulations in a way that limits Honig’s authority, the clash will come.

Board member David T. Romero of Fresno tried to head off the clash between the board and Honig by urging board members to delay action for a month to provide time for a “gloves off” discussion with Honig about the roles of the board and the superintendent.

But Carrabino said that would be “an unnecessary delay” and the action would “get lost in this vast morass of political inactivity.”

Romero’s motion lost, 6 to 4, and the main motion--to seek the new board powers--was approved 8 to 2, with only Romero and Kenneth L. Peters in opposition.

Peters, former superintendent of schools in Beverly Hills, later said the action seemed to be a return to the 1960s when state Supt. of Public Instruction Max Rafferty, a conservative Republican, feuded constantly with a board that included several liberals appointed by former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown.