Frustrated Hart Sees No Progress in Budget Crisis : Finances: The legislator says Gov. Wilson and the leaders of the Assembly and Senate have failed to provide direction.

Voicing deep frustration over the 42-day budget deadlock, state Sen. Gary K. Hart says he has never been so depressed in his 18 years as a legislator.

“I don’t see any progress at all taking place. None,” said Hart (D-Santa Barbara), whose district includes the western portion of Ventura County.

During a Senate debate on a budget compromise Sunday night and again in an interview on Monday, Hart complained about lack of leadership--even within his own party.

Hart has had a ringside seat during many of the deliberations triggered by the Legislature’s failure to enact a spending plan for the fiscal year that began July 1. He is one of six lawmakers on a joint Senate-Assembly budget conference committee, which is charged with finding a way to overcome an $11-billion budget shortfall.

The veteran lawmaker said the top leadership of the Senate and Assembly and Republican Gov. Pete Wilson--collectively known as the “Big 5”--have failed to provide direction to the conference committee. “There’s been a strange and embarrassing silence from the Big 5,” Hart said.

Hart was among 24 senators--three short of the two-thirds majority required for passage--who supported a compromise budget measure stitched together by Sen. Frank Hill (R-Whittier). The vote was 24 to 13.

“What’s depressing is to listen to the debate,” Hart said Monday, adding that neither side seems to be listening to the other. “We have a proposal by a Republican legislator that calls for significant compromise on both sides and no one else is willing to join Frank Hill on the Republican side” in the Senate.

Underscoring the wide difference of opinion on the budget, Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita), Ventura County’s other state senator, opposed Hill’s proposal and described Sunday night’s debate as “a waste of time.” Davis said he is placing his faith in the legislative leadership. “They’ve been making steady progress,” he said.

But Hart said he cannot “accept the underlying premise that progress is being made.”

He noted that Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) acknowledged during Sunday’s session that the leadership group had failed to address a major sticking point: How much education funding will be reduced.

Wilson wants to cut about $2 billion from what he proposed for schools in January. Democrats have said they would support a figure between $600 million and $1 billion.

The Assembly also rejected Hill’s proposal, by a 46-24 margin--short of the two-thirds majority needed in the 80-member lower house. Ventura County’s delegation split along partisan lines, with Democrat Jack O’Connell of Carpinteria in favor and Republicans Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks and Cathie Wright of Simi Valley in opposition.

Wright, who also sits on the budget conference committee, said she shares Hart’s frustration with the budget process. But she maintained that Wilson provided direction to budget writers by saying he would oppose new taxes, deficit spending and any rollover of state debt from this year until next.

Wright said Hill “was dreaming” if he thought he could win passage for his proposal. She criticized one provision that would have shifted $1.7 billion from local governments to the state but would still have required local authorities to provide a range of state-mandated services.

Hart said public frustration over the budget fight does not seem to have reached the boiling point--in part because relatively few people have been inconvenienced.

But on Sunday, Hart urged his colleagues--who were constitutionally required to send a budget bill to the governor by June 15--to act immediately or face a fed-up electorate.

“If we don’t take some action beginning tonight or very soon . . . we will have clearly abrogated our constitutional obligation, our oath of office,” Hart said.

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