Wilson Attempts Damage Control : Government: Even his most loyal legislative supporter says the governor wound up eating crow by holding up budget enactment for workers’ compensation reform, then settling for very little.

Gov. Pete Wilson tried to put the best face Wednesday on what legislative leaders were calling a political blunder: his holding up enactment of a state budget while demanding workers’ compensation reform, then settling for very little.

In the view of his most loyal legislative supporter, Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno, the new GOP governor also wound up “eating crow” and forcing Maddy to share the plate. That happened when Wilson flip-flopped on his opposition to an income tax increase and endorsed a “soak-the-rich” scheme that Maddy felt duty-bound to support.

But Wilson emerged Wednesday with one victory, albeit one he claimed to have had no direct role in: the dumping by Assembly Republicans of GOP Leader Ross Johnson of La Habra, one of the governor’s chief critics who bragged about voting “no” on Wilson’s tax proposals; new leader Bill Jones of Fresno said he believes it will be his “duty to try to do the very best I can to support the governor.”

So the change in Assembly GOP leadership, brought on by the long budget fight between Wilson and lower house Republicans, should help the governor in his future legislative dealings. And lawmakers were saying Wednesday that Wilson will need all the help he can get because relations between him and legislators turned sour when the governor reneged on an agreement aimed at getting a budget enacted by the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

Encouraged by business interests, Wilson had demanded major reforms in the state’s costly workers’ compensation program as his eleventh-hour price for accepting a “tax-the-rich” measure and signing a $55.7-billion budget. But negotiations got nowhere. As Californians started shelling out stiff new taxes on Monday without a state budget and some state workers began missing paychecks, Wilson surrendered. “We ran out of time and didn’t have the votes,” he explained Wednesday.

Wilson settled for what he described as a modest “down payment” on future reform, which he pledged to keep pressing for. All he got was sharp curtailment of claims for stress during the first six months on the job, plus a law permitting felony prosecution of fraudulent disability claims.

Maddy called the settlement “a joke” during the floor debate Tuesday night. Like most lawmakers, he questioned why the workers’ compensation issue should have been part of budget negotiations anyway. Wilson had contended it was because the disability program was driving employers out of the state, thus hurting California’s economy and, therefore, Sacramento’s tax revenues.

Wilson told reporters Wednesday he decided that his greatest “bargaining power” and “leverage” for workers’ compensation reform was during the budget fight. Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) said the freshman governor opened a can of worms that he may later regret.

“The governor has established the fact that leverage should be used,” Roberti said. “In this case, he wanted to use leverage for workers’ compensation. Well, now that the cat is out of the bag, we can use leverage too.” The Democratic leader reminded reporters that the Senate must confirm many of the governor’s top appointees, and added: “We intend to use the confirmation process as leverage. And I’m not afraid to say so.”

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), who turned out, ironically, to be Wilson’s strongest ally in the lower house, also said that insertion of workers’ compensation into the legislative debate “was a tragic mistake” because it delayed budget enactment by two weeks.

But Wilson, listening to all the reports of legislative criticism, emphatically told reporters:

“Look, let me just tell you something--unlike some of my critics, I didn’t come back here (from the U.S. Senate) only to try those things that (would be) slam-dunk successes. That is not what leadership is about. This state needed leadership. I came back to make changes. And I felt quite confident I would undertake certain things that would not succeed the first time. But I’m not here to be a political survivor. I don’t want to sound too righteous, but frankly I didn’t come back here to wear this job as a boutonniere in my lapel. I came back to have some fun with it.”

As chuckles rippled through the press conference room, the governor added: “Yeah, it’s a strange sense of fun.”

Wilson, by inference, also took a shot at conservative Republicans: “Frankly, I don’t have a whole lot of respect for the kind of searing comments that have been made by people who did not have the courage to participate (in negotiations while) criticizing those who did have the courage to do things they found very distasteful, but necessary and responsible . . . It is the easiest thing in the world to simply hunker down and chant, ‘No new taxes’ but that doesn’t close the ($14.3-billion revenue) gap.”

But outside the governor’s office, criticism was coming from all sides. “Nobody trusts him anymore,” said one major business lobbyist. A top labor lobbyist said Wilson had played “bad politics” and his organization was ecstatic about it, “although we’re not saying so publicly.”

One veteran Republican operative said Wilson wound up looking like “a paper tiger” by threatening to veto the budget without major workers’ compensation reform and then not carrying out the threat.

“That sends a signal to the Legislature that he’s not as tough as he claims to be,” said this Republican, who asked not to be identified. “A governor has to take pains not to leave the impression that he doesn’t mean what he says. . . . Your word is your bond in this business.”

But Roberti, who had enjoyed a good relationship with Wilson until the July 1 collapse of budget negotiations, complimented the governor for finally backing off his workers’ compensation demands. “He chose what a moderate would choose,” Roberti said. “He chose to run the state rather than give lectures on conservative politics.”