Gov. Wilson’s Initiative

Your July 9 editorial criticizing the Taxpayers Protection Act initiative (Proposition 165) on the November ballot is very wide of the mark.

You attack the initiative as giving the governor “usual emergency powers,” yet precisely the opposite is true: Virtually every other state gives its governor authority to close up unplanned budget deficit. California is almost alone in hamstringing its own chief executive in dealing with a fiscal crisis, and the unfortunate results are plain to see.

The Office of Planning and Research recently carried out an exhaustive survey of the 50 states. We found that fully 44 states give their governors more authority than California, and 38 states give significantly more authority, to bring spending into line when revenues unexpectedly fall short. The reasoning is clear: The alternative is deficit spending, which is forbidden under most state constitutions, including California’s.

The criticisms of Prop. 165 as some kind of “power grab,” therefore, are almost completely misplaced. The initiative simply seeks to restore to California the ability to ensure fiscal discipline that already exists in most other states. The absence of this ability has brought us to where we are today: fiscal chaos, autopilot spending, special interest gridlock and state IOUs.

The enactment of these standard gubernatorial powers would in no way mark “a strategic retreat from representative government by diminishing the role of the Legislature,” as you wrongly suggest. Rather, it would simply even the balance between the branches of government that now exists in most other states, and ensure a more rational budget process.

RICHARD P. SYBERT

Sacramento

The writer is director of the Office of Planning and Research; he makes these comments in his private capacity.