One Cure Worse Than the Disease : Fall initiative wouldn’t help budget gridlock

Every year, it seems, there’s another budget crisis in Sacramento. Typically, the governor and the Legislature joust and tarry and, finally, compromise for one more year. The state budget process is chaotic by nature--so the last thing voters would want to do is actually codify budget chaos.

Yet the current budget impasse is just the sort that, by the provisions of an initiative on the November ballot, would enable the governor to declare a fiscal emergency and assume unilateral authority to make reductions in any program not protected by the state Constitution. If this proposed initiative were law now, Pete Wilson at this point could have declared a fiscal emergency and would have the power to make cuts in health care, higher education or even public safety.

NEW POWERS?: Commonly called the “Welfare Initiative,” because it would cut welfare benefits by up to 25%, the proposed constitutional amendment is officially titled the Taxpayers’ Protection Act and is better seen as the Executive Branch Emergency Powers Act.

If Gov. Wilson can use the budget impasse to make the case for a revision in the existing balance of powers, then the 1993 budget battle will be over before it begins. Come June, 1993, if the Legislature does not give Wilson what he asks for, then its “failure” will give him the legal power to, in effect, dispense with legislative approval altogether.

Wilson claims that a new Constitution, by giving him and all future governors these emergency powers, would provide a powerful incentive to legislative action. It also provides the governor’s party with an incentive to sabotage the budget process so as to hand the budget over to its own leader.

The danger is that voters, already disenchanted with the Legislature, could easily be seduced by the welfare part of the initiative and overlook the new budget powers that it would bestow on the state’s chief executive. But voters need to get beyond their understandable distaste for legislators in general.

The initiative would set in stone a constitutional budget power shift to the governor’s office that would continue long after Wilson and the current Legislature are gone.

Given the complexity of the relationship among taxes, services and quality of life, there is a better-than-even chance that the November initiative will be approved. If that happens, it will mean a strategic retreat from representative government by diminishing the role of the Legislature.

NEW TAXES?: In the meantime, this budget impasse signals that hard times lie ahead for California. Hard times are not good times for people who never want higher taxes. Who does? It’s hard to raise taxes in a recession; yet if history is any guide, it may be even harder to cut services. No new taxes, a balanced budget and a safe, well-ordered society. . . . Whether anyone arises to champion a safe, well-ordered society may depend on whether a triple-dip recession can have the political effect of the Great Depression. One way or another, both the nation and the state may know soon.