Governor Pleads With Assembly Republicans : Budget: Wilson tells GOP caucus to stop blocking his proposals for tax increases and spending cuts.

Gov. Pete Wilson pleaded with Assembly Republicans on Monday to act responsibly and stop blocking his budget proposal, declaring it is the best offer they will get.

“The smart thing for them to do is to have a little courage and if they have to hold their nose (while voting), do so and get busy,” the Republican governor told reporters after meeting privately for more than two hours with the intractable GOP caucus.

Asked if he had twisted their arms, Wilson replied with an impish grin: “Twist arms, I? Gentle, persuasive fellow that I am?” Then, more seriously, he added: “I will break arms if it’s necessary.”

When asked about Wilson’s comment, Assembly Republican Leader Ross Johnson of La Habra said: “We’ve got plenty of plaster of Paris.”

Johnson and other Republicans said Wilson made little progress in gaining their support during the lengthy meeting, which was described by the participants as respectful in mood but tough in content.

The irony of the Republican governor not being able to bring aboard Republican Assembly members for his package of tax increases and spending cuts was beginning to irk Assembly Democrats and senators of both parties.

The Senate, during sessions over the Father’s Day weekend, passed a $56.4-billion spending plan, a 1 1/4-cent sales tax hike and sharp cuts in welfare. Many more pieces of the governor’s budget-balancing package must be passed before a $14.3-billion deficit can be erased. So far, Assembly Republicans are refusing to support any of it, declaring that they want more permanent spending cuts and fewer tax increases.

The Legislature’s constitutional deadline for passing a balanced budget was last Saturday. By law, the new budget must be signed by the governor before the fiscal year begins July 1, although there is no means of enforcing this mandate except the threat of possible public wrath that might further tarnish the Legislature’s image.

Wilson used far more carrot than stick in his meeting with Republicans, participants said. For example, he promised to help the reelection effort of any GOP lawmaker who supported his budget package and was challenged for renomination by another Republican. He also pledged to attack any challenger who assailed a GOP legislator for supporting a tax hike.

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), who along with Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno had negotiated a budget compromise with Wilson, was critical of the governor for not leaning harder on the Assembly GOP.

“I don’t know why there wasn’t one Republican vote (for the budget when the Assembly voted Saturday),” Roberti said. “The governor must have one friend in that caucus. . . . It really looked like the only people who were giving it a college-try (were in) the Senate.”

Roberti said he must have told Wilson “100 times: ‘You’re the only one who can deliver votes in the Assembly Republican caucus.’ ”

Wilson in recent days has huddled with some Assembly Republicans individually, but Sunday asked for a meeting with the entire GOP caucus. He finally got the meeting at midday Monday.

Describing the confrontation later to reporters, Wilson said he told his fellow Republicans that “this (package) is as good as it’s going to get. But it can get a whole lot worse.”

For one thing, Wilson noted, legislators--especially Democrats--”are being hammered” by public employee unions who are trying to kill key parts of the budget compromise that cut civil servants’ salaries and potentially reduce their pension benefits. “What this budget test is going to mean,” the governor said, “is whether this Legislature is capable of withstanding special interest pleading.”

One particularly controversial piece of Wilson’s package is a bill that would allow him to abolish the 13-member board that governs the $62-billion Public Employees Retirement System. He would replace it with a nine-member panel controlled by the governor. This is part of the “structural reform” that he and Republicans are demanding. Lobbyists for public employees unions were turning up in droves throughout the Capitol to fight the proposal.

They were being joined by Treasurer Kathleen Brown, a Democrat and potential political adversary of Wilson.

“It strikes me as a hostile takeover of the pension fund,” Brown said. “The analogy is to Franklin Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme. When the President didn’t like the U. S. Supreme Court’s decisions, he proposed changing the makeup of the court.”

The governor now appoints only four people to the 13-member retirement board. Under Wilson’s proposal, he would appoint five of the new nine. Gubernatorial press secretary Bill Livingstone said that Wilson believes the current board “has been making decisions that benefit the retirees without considering the cost to taxpayers.”

Wilson’s argument to Assembly Republicans, he reported, was that the package he negotiated with Senate leaders contains “more structural reform by far than this place has ever seen before.”

He also told them “this is a very tough budget, but it is a fair budget and, under the circumstances, a wise one. . . . It is full of pain, but it distributes that pain fairly. . . . It represents a little honesty and a little realism.”

Wilson’s budget-balancing package contains $7.7 billion in tax increases and about $5 billion in spending cuts. Both are necessary, he said, and legislators who cannot vote for tax hikes as well as spending cuts “are not quite honest with themselves or with their constituents. . . . They are going to have to act responsibly.”

Sounding an optimistic note, Wilson predicted that “we will have sufficient votes to get this budget through,” although “I am concerned about the pace.”

That optimism was not echoed by the Republicans he had just met with.

“To say that he has the votes is somewhat premature,” GOP leader Johnson said. “There was not a single voice of support in the (caucus) room for the package.”

Assemblyman Stan Staham (R-Oak Run) said: “We have a better chance of finding a cure for AIDS today than we do of passing this budget.”

Neither legislative house took any action on the budget Monday.

Times staff writers Virginia Ellis, Jerry Gillam, Carl Ingram, Paul Jacobs and Douglas P. Shuit contributed to this story.