Pete Wilson’s Problem With the Budget Fight

To understand why Republican Gov. Pete Wilson is having so much trouble winning his budget fight, talk to GOP state Sen. Frank Hill of Whittier.

Hill’s district, extending through middle-class and upper-middle-class portions of the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys, has loyally supported Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Wilson.

The senator himself reminds me of the eager young Republican advance people who knock themselves out on political campaigns.

As Hill, 38, sat across from me in his office in the Capitol on Wednesday--his dark hair cut short and neat, his conservative suit nicely pressed--I could picture him in his youth, walkie-talkie in hand, feverishly making the arrangements for a Reagan rally.

His Republican credentials are impeccable. He worked on the staffs of Republican Sen. S.I. Hayakawa and GOP Rep. Wayne Grisham before he was elected to the Assembly and then to the Senate.

With this background, it’s most surprising to find Hill opposing Wilson’s proposal to cut $2.3 billion from the public schools to help meet a $10.7-billion budget deficit. Democrats favor a much smaller school reduction.

But, as Hill explained it, his constituents moved to their hillside neighborhoods for the public schools. To them, education is government’s most important service.

“If the message you are going to come through with is that the Republicans will cut the schools and the Democrats want to protect the schools, I don’t want to be in that brier patch,” Hill said.

And, there are other suburban Republicans who agree.

Hill’s political experience has taught him the moves needed to get something done in a group of egotistical legislators. Realizing that the governor was embarked on a course that would hurt his district, Hill began talking to another skilled legislative player, liberal Democratic Assemblyman Phil Isenberg of Sacramento. Both enjoy the twists and turns of legislative maneuvering. And Isenberg, like Hill, was tired of the deadlock between Wilson and Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

“We started talking on and off,” said Isenberg. Pretty soon, they had a proposal, which quickly became known in the Capitol as “The Phil and Hill plan.”

The Phil and Hill plan is a compromise. It would cut $1.2 billion from the public schools. This is less than Wilson’s $2.3 billion, but more than the $656 million proposed by Democrats.

Instead, Phil and Hill propose huge cuts in state aid to local governments, money cities and counties have relied on since Proposition 13 sharply reduced their share of the property tax in 1978. It’s time, the two lawmakers said, for cities and counties to stand alone.

The plan attracted an odd combination of opponents, including Wilson and liberal Democratic Los Angeles city officials.

The Phil and Hill plan would cost L.A. more than $300 million a year in state aid. City officials have protested this as being far too big a hit. They said that Los Angeles, which lost more through Proposition 13 and now receives the largest chunk of state aid, would be hurt worse than other cities.

As for Wilson, as a former mayor of San Diego, the governor is more sympathetic to city needs than suburbanite Hill. He also felt that the Phil and Hill plan would lead to another budget deficit next year. And he seemed determined to stick by his demand for school cuts.

But the political power in the Legislature--as in the state--now lies in the suburbs rather than the cities.

That is why on Wednesday morning, Wilson’s finance director, Tom Hayes, and his top legislative adviser, Bill Hauck, went to Isenberg’s office to meet with Phil and Hill and work on a compromise.

In the end, Hill probably won’t get all he wants. But his constituents won’t be forgotten. Wilson, trying to unite his Republicans, knows that without suburbs like Frank Hill’s, the GOP and his own career can’t survive.