Court Asked to Take Welfare Plan Off Ballot : Initiatives: Wilson’s proposal violates state Constitution’s ‘single-subject rule,’ an attorney for advocacy groups argues.

An attorney for welfare recipients, voters and children’s advocacy groups asked the state Court of Appeal on Monday to remove Gov. Pete Wilson’s welfare-cutting initiative from the November ballot.

Steven L. Mayer, representing the anti-initiative organizations, argued before the 3rd District Court of Appeal that Wilson’s ballot measure is invalid because it covers more than one subject--slashing welfare grants by as much as 25% and giving the governor broad new powers to deal with budget emergencies.

By asking for both changes in one initiative, Mayer contended, the initiative violates the state Constitution’s “single-subject rule.”

“The people must deal with each subject on a subject-by-subject basis,” said Mayer, one of the attorneys representing the League of Women Voters, Children Now, California Common Cause, the California Homeless and Housing Coalition, and Coleen M. Jarvis, who receives payments through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.

The two purposes could be accomplished with two initiatives, but not with one, Mayer said.

However, Daniel M. Kolkey, an attorney for Wilson, countered that rapidly rising welfare costs are directly related to the state’s runaway expenditures and threaten to crowd out other needed programs.

He said that the emergency budgetary powers and welfare cuts have a single objective--to allow a governor to deal with a fiscal crisis and, therefore, “were reasonably germane.”

Both attorneys made their arguments before appellate Justices Robert K. Puglia, Keith F. Sparks and George Nicholson, who jousted with both lawyers.

Puglia, an appointee of former Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan, grilled Mayer, asking why an effort to limit spending on welfare costs could not be regarded as an effort to deal with the state’s fiscal emergency.

Mayer argued that doing so would eviscerate the single-subject rule, and could be used to put any number of subjects in the same initiative.

Sparks, an appointee of former Democratic Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., tested Kolkey’s argument that welfare cuts and the budget problems were closely connected.

(Nicholson was appointed to the court by Republican ex-Gov. George Deukmejian.)

Secretary of State March Fong Eu, who formally places initiatives on the ballot once they qualify, has asked that the courts settle the matter by June 25.

Although the appellate panel has 90 days to issue its decision, the court is expected to respond quickly because of the problems of changing the ballot as the election approaches.

However the appellate court rules, it is likely that the losing side will ask the California Supreme Court to settle the question.

At the center of the detailed, sometimes arcane legal arguments is Wilson’s initiative--a centerpiece of his effort to cut back on state spending in the midst of a budget crisis. To qualify for the ballot, Wilson submitted petitions with more than 1 million signatures in April. The two-part measure--a constitutional amendment plus a change in the state law governing welfare payments--required 615,958 valid signatures to be certified.

Titled the “Governmental Accountability and Taxpayer Protection Act,” it contends that the size of government programs is outstripping the ability of citizens to pay because of “autopilot spending programs, or entitlements.”

Central to Wilson’s assessment of the problem is the notion that “tax receivers”--a broad, often disparate group that includes public school children, university students and welfare families--are growing in numbers, while “taxpayers are starting to flee the state.”

Part of the governor’s proposed solution is to cut welfare payments generally by 10%. A household with one adult and two children, now getting a maximum grant of $663 a month, would see its check shrink to $597. After six months on the program, most grants would be reduced another 15%.

The size of a household’s welfare grant would not be increased for any child conceived while either parent was receiving welfare. And families from states with payment levels lower than California’s would, for their first year in this state, be eligible only for the amount they would have received in their home state.

In addition, the initiative would give the governor new powers to reduce state spending during fiscal emergencies--when there is no agreement on a new budget or when spending under an approved budget is 3% out of balance.

During a state of emergency, the governor could cut the pay of state workers by 5% and reduce the budgets of programs not protected by the state Constitution.

The argument of those who want to keep the initiative off the ballot is based on a provision in the state Constitution that states that “an initiative measure embracing more than one subject may not be submitted to the electors or have any effect.”

The three-justice panel must decide whether the various elements of the initiative are sufficiently different to violate the rule or whether, as Wilson and other proponents contend, “welfare reform and budget reform are one and the same.”

The California Supreme Court has stopped an initiative based on the single-subject clause in the past. In 1988, the court threw out a proposed insurance reform initiative, forcing the backers to rewrite their measure to qualify it for the ballot. The revised measure, Proposition 104, was defeated.

On the same ballot that year was Proposition 105, a wide-ranging initiative on the theme of disclosure--in health insurance programs, nursing home care, South African investments and campaign financing. After voters approved the measure, the state Supreme Court struck it down because it violated the single-subject rule.