Deukmejian Legacy: The Good, Bad and Ugly : Politics: During governor’s 8 years, the county gained freeways and CSU San Marcos. But social services went from bad to worse.

George Deukmejian’s tenure as the 35th governor of California has produced some stark contrasts in San Diego County.

In terms of concrete and steel, Deukmejian will leave behind several impressive monuments on the local landscape: A burgeoning 304-acre university campus in San Marcos, a new maximum-security prison on the Otay Mesa, and one of the state’s new toll roads.

But in terms of human needs, local officials say Deukmejian’s legacy will be more one of frustration and losing ground.

The Republican governor’s determination to maintain the status quo statewide--especially his steadfast refusal to raise general taxes--only served to hurt an area that has grown 26% since he took his oath of office nearly eight years ago, they claim.

While the number of poor, drug addicts and mentally ill has increased dramatically, Deukmejian’s relatively tight-fisted approach to budget matters has failed to give the county enough money to keep up with the demand, they say.

As a result, the county has been forced to sue the state three times for additional funding--and still the governmental system responsible for taking care of the less fortunate is nearing collapse, they contend.

“An area that has grown as rapidly as San Diego is certainly worse off” after Deukmejian, said state Sen. Lucy Killea (D-San Diego). “There was a status quo approach and that simply did not take care of the dynamic situation that we had here for the last eight years.”

State Sen. Bill Craven (R-Oceanside), a Deukmejian ally, agreed. The 17-year veteran of the Legislature also lamented the fact that having a politically sympathetic governor in Sacramento did not help San Diego break free of its stepsister status behind Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“I think the governor showed interest but I don’t think those interests were implemented,” said Craven. “We had basically the same problem with Gov. (Jerry) Brown, who I used to think felt that the state ended around the Tehachapi Mountains.”

A case in point is just how tough it was for Craven to persuade Deukmejian to open a $100,000 Department of Commerce office in California’s second-largest city.

It took Craven two tries in two years to persuade Deukmejian to sign legislation last year to spend the relatively minimal sum--despite the fact that Los Angeles and San Francisco already have such offices, and the governor took highly publicized trips to open trade offices in Japan and Europe.

Deukmejian also resisted pleas from San Diego legislators for the state’s help to stem the flow of rogue sewage lapping onto local beaches from Tijuana. The governor was loathe to commit any state money to a problem he thought belonged to the federal government, said Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Rancho San Diego).

“His concern, historically, was that if the state moved forward, the feds would back away,” said Peace, explaining why Deukmejian spurned his requests to set aside up to $200 million to build a sewage treatment plant at the border. It wasn’t until last year that Deukmejian agreed to put $40 million in sewage bonds on the November ballot--a request that voters rejected.

But the area that has struggled the most to keep up under Deukmejian has been county government, which is responsible for taking care of San Diego’s indigent, uninsured sick, mentally ill and local criminals.

“When we talk about meeting the needs of the county, in terms of the infrastructure, jail funding, the (welfare) services to keep up with the population . . . no, we haven’t been able to keep up,” said Manuel Lopez, the county’s budget director.

On paper, the county’s budget in the Deukmejian years has more than doubled--from $800.2 million to $1.67 billion--while the county’s total population has increased 26%--from 2 million to 2.5 million. Yet the budgetary increase belies a financial desperation that grips the county.

State statistics show that the county could raise only $189 per resident for its general fund last year--an abysmally small amount that ranked 56 out of California’s 58 counties. The state average was $260, and larger Los Angeles County collected nearly $300 per capita, the numbers show.

There are two reasons for the poor showing, say county officials. Proposition 13 in 1978 froze the county’s receipts from local property taxes at a relatively low level, compared to other counties. And Sacramento has been traditionally stingy toward San Diego when handing out money for such programs as mental health and alcohol rehabilitation.

Under Deukmejian, the fiscal squeeze on San Diego has become a “revenue starvation,” warned a report released last month by the California Counties Foundation. While county programs mandated by Sacramento grew 90% during the late 1980s, the Administration gave the county only 67% more money to do the job.

Meanwhile, the county has lost $76 million in local sales and property taxes over the last five years because redevelopment, incorporations and annexations have eroded its tax base. Its share of welfare costs has grown 284%, while its bill for providing public defenders increased 300% over that same period.

The result has been a steady deterioration of services and public buildings such as the 260-bed Edgemoor Geriatric Hospital, the report says.

“County facilities are literally falling down around the heads of employees and others who are housed in them,” the report notes. In one court building, the asbestos is so bad that it requires a janitor to wear “protective space suit-type clothing” just to change a light bulb.

Such desperate signs have forced county officials to turn around and sue state government for more money. The lawsuits were not aimed directly at the governor, but intended to overturn state funding formulas that discriminate against San Diego’s substance abuse and mental health programs.

“Money was appropriated and rationed out in a manner that was unfair to us,” said Craven about the formulas. “I don’t know if that was the governor’s fault, but Los Angeles and the city of San Francisco got a greater per capita share than what we received.”

One suit has been settled, netting the county an extra $13.7 million a year for drug and alcohol treatment. The others are still pending. While Deukmejian was certainly not to blame for the formula inequity, county officials say privately, he didn’t correct the problem either.

But Deukmejian supporters in San Diego County blame the Democratic-controlled Legislature for those faulty formulas. And they say their man in the governor’s suite has done much good for the area.

In political terms, they give Deukmejian high points for finally tapping San Diegans to fill high-level state government appointments. Along with state funding formulas, San Diegans have long complained that past governors have slighted them when it came to major political appointments.

The complaints have trailed off since former congressman Clair W. Burgener was appointed to the State Personnel Board and the prestigious UC Board of Regents.

Also tapped were restaurateur Ralph R. Pesqueira and financier Tom Stickel for the California State University Board of Trustees, and former San Diego Police Chief William B. Kolendar for the community colleges board of governors.

Deukmejian’s promise to appoint get-tough judges translated into lots of new faces--belonging primarily to white male prosecutors--on the San Diego bench.

“It (San Diego County) has been affected directly because one of the governor’s primary agendas when he was elected was to change the bench to reflect the public’s view (that criminals should be punished harshly),” said former state Sen. Larry Stirling, who was appointed a municipal judge by Deukmejian in 1989. “The overwhelming atmosphere is to make sure the victims are taken into account.”

Yet one of Deukmejian’s most lauded appointments was that of Caterpillar heavy machinery dealer Tom Hawthorne to the California Transportation Commission--a choice that supporters say has given San Diego a bigger share of the state’s transportation pie.

Hawthorne’s direct participation in those projects, though, has been limited. The state’s Fair Political Practices Commission ruled several years ago that he had to stop voting on San Diego items because local freeway projects translated into business for his dealership, which leased the heavy equipment to do the work.

Even in his limited role, however, Hawthorne was able to nudge the commission to pay closer attention to San Diego. Although it didn’t heed his advice to lift the tolls on the Coronado Bay Bridge, his influence helped build momentum for the completion of Interstate 15 through the mid-cities and the extension of California 52 from Interstate 15 to California 67.

In a larger sense, Deukmejian’s avid support for freeway construction helped clear a five-year state backlog of projects that had accumulated under the Brown Administration. In San Diego, that meant nearly $600 million over eight years to widen 110 lanes and build 16.5 new miles of freeway.

Another transportation coup came late in Deukmejian’s tenure. A San Diego project running from the border through undeveloped South County land was chosen by Caltrans last month to be one of the state’s first privately built toll roads.

Those projects are just some of the tangible reminders that Deukmejian will leave San Diego.

Bond proceeds and direct appropriations during his administration sent $57.5 million to local parks and recreation departments. Despite the dire budget wrangling last year, the city of San Diego’s share of all state park projects was 9%--more than Los Angeles, San Jose and San Francisco combined, according to figures kept by the city’s Sacramento lobbyist, Kathryn C. Rees.

On the shores of the Lower Otay Reservoir, a new year-round Olympic training center is under construction with a little help from the state. Despite a brewing budget crisis, Deukmejian last year approved a $15-million state loan to the San Diego foundation building the $70-million sports complex.

Two miles north of the border, Deukmejian’s determination to ambitiously expand the prison system resulted in the Richard J. Donovan state prison on Otay Mesa. Opened in 1987, the medium security prison houses 4,700 inmates and employs 1,150 staffers.

As a measure of its contribution to the community, a prison spokesman said the inmates last year completed 75,000 hours of community service, and the payroll pumped $55.2 million into the local economy.

But the project mentioned the most by Deukmejian supporters is the new CSU San Marcos campus, which began its first semester in September at a leased industrial park.

The campus fulfills a career-long dream for Craven, who has been pushing the idea of building a North County university for years. Craven’s position as the school’s political mentor is undisputed, and the university will name its administration building after Craven when it is completed in 1992.

Yet some say Deukmejian also deserves credit for making the San Marcos dream come true on his watch. The governor’s budget support for the CSU system’s 20th campus, its first in 72 years, was crucial, they say.

“Had he (Deukmejian) not honored the commitment of Sen. Craven with his signature on the line, it obviously wouldn’t have happened,” said Ken Lounsbery, who served on a citizens advisory committee for CSU San Marcos.

When fully built out in 18 years, the campus will cover 304 acres of an old farm in San Marcos and accommodate an expected 33,000 students. Hoping to inspire global awareness, the infant school’s founding faculty has already established writing requirements and guidelines promoting student fluency in foreign languages.

Every dollar of state money spent at CSU San Marcos translates into $2.70 pumped into the North County economy, according to a CSU analysis. What’s more, said Lounsbery, the presence of the university will “change the entire fabric of inland San Diego County.”

“North San Diego County was rapidly taking on the reputation of being the playground for the rich,” he said. “I think with the influx of more thought-provoking, some deeper viewpoints, and the attraction of youth that zealously guards the independence of the university, there will be some different perspectives for North County.”

For that, a conservative Republican governor named Deukmejian can take credit, said Lounsbery. “I will consider it a perpetual debt that San Diego County owes to Gov. Deukmejian,” he said.