Budget Bills Advance; Veto Vowed : Capitol: Assembly sends two measures to Senate. A spokesman for governor says they are an attempt to undermine his talks with upper house.

The Assembly on Saturday passed and sent to the Senate a school finance bill and an accounting change that Democrats want to use to help balance their budget proposal, but Gov. Pete Wilson vowed to veto both bills if they reach his desk.

With the Senate taking the day off to allow its leaders and staff to continue drafting what they hope will be a bipartisan compromise, the Assembly took center stage in the budget battle, which has reached 54 days.

The two bills the Assembly passed are keyed to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown’s budget plan, which is pending in the Assembly but still appears short of attracting the eight to 10 Republican votes it would need for passage.

The education bill would give elementary, middle and high schools the same money per student they received last year. It represents an $851-million reduction from the level of funding Wilson proposed in January but is more than the governor now wants to give primary and secondary schools and community colleges.

The bookkeeping change would allow the state to account for its claims under the Medi-Cal program when the bills are paid, rather than when they are in the pipeline. This would shift the accounting of about a month of claims, worth about $940 million, from the end of one fiscal year to the beginning of the next.

Both bills passed on votes that went generally along party lines. Unlike the budget bill, which requires a two-thirds majority, the two measures acted upon Saturday required only a simple majority for passage.

Wilson said through a spokesman that he would veto both measures. Although he has agreed to keep per-student funding even this year for schools through high school, his education proposal would force the schools to borrow from future allocations to stay even, and it cuts deeper into community colleges than the Democratic plan does.

The accounting change, Wilson has said, is a gimmick that would allow the state to postpone dealing with a portion of the imbalance between the amount the government collects in tax revenues and what it spends on programs.

Wilson’s chief spokesman said the governor talked to Senate President David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) by phone as soon as the Assembly acted and asked Roberti to bring up the legislation as quickly as possible so it can get to his desk for a veto.

“The governor wants to get those bills out of the way so we can get back to the serious negotiations under way in the Senate,” said Dan Schnur, Wilson’s director of communications.

Schnur accused Brown and the Assembly Democrats of trying to trip up the Senate’s efforts to draft a compromise budget.

“Willie Brown and the Democrats are engaged in a game of budget sabotage,” he said. “This is meaningless. It’s a speed bump on the road on the way to a budget solution.”

Brown, speaking to reporters on the Assembly floor, rejected the idea that his actions were underhanded. He noted that the budget plan he is pushing has virtually every Democratic vote in his house and the support of one or two Republicans. No other plan has nearly as much backing, he said.

The Senate’s private discussions, he said, so far are “just talk.”

“That’s what’s screwed this thing up over the last 52 days,” he said. “Talk has represented hope that doesn’t translate into votes from people. We’ve got to start talking hard facts, hard activities, hard statutes.”

Brown acknowledged that he is concerned over what he has heard about the emerging Senate plan, which apparently will propose cutting deeper into welfare and the schools than Assembly Democrats have accepted.

Brown and the Democrats have been making changes in their plan in hopes of luring Republican members into deserting the governor and Assembly Republican Leader Bill Jones of Fresno. The Speaker has indicated that he is ready to abandon the Medi-Cal accounting change, which Republicans oppose, and substitute a repeal of the renters tax credit to balance his budget.

“This house may act independent of the governor’s apron strings,” Brown said.

Both houses have scheduled sessions for tonight.

Times staff writer Jerry Gillam contributed to this story.