Prop. 165 and Right-to-Die Measure Trail

California voters appeared Tuesday night to be rejecting Gov. Pete Wilson’s welfare and budget initiative and a controversial measure that would allow doctors to help terminally ill patients die.

With nearly half the votes tallied, Wilson’s Proposition 165 was trailing. Voters also appeared to be narrowly rejecting Proposition 161, the right-to-die measure.

Apparently responding to a multimillion-dollar ad campaign funded by big business, the electorate seemed to be overwhelmingly defeating Proposition 167, the “Robin Hood” measure that would cut the sales tax while increasing taxes on corporations and upper-income individuals.

Shortly after the polls closed, Lenny Goldberg, an author of the initiative, conceded his measure was “not looking like we’re going to win.” But he claimed a victory of sorts, saying the proposition had pulled away corporate contributions from Wilson’s welfare initiative, which he called “an attack on the poor.”

Richard S. Woodward, director of the No on 167 campaign, declared that “the big winners are the people of California, the taxpayers, the business people small and large, and the consumers who would have been its victims.”

Voters also appeared to be heeding warnings of potential job losses and small business failures by soundly rejecting Proposition 166, a physician-sponsored proposal requiring employers to provide health insurance for most workers.

But Proposition 163, a ballot measure repealing a state sales tax on snack food, bottled water and candy that had no organized opposition, appeared headed for easy passage.

The propositions were among 13 proposals, including an initiative to limit the terms of House and Senate members in Washington, that voters had to pick through Tuesday.

The list of measures was short by California standards, but some would have pushed the state into the forefront of controversial national or international movements. The authors of Proposition 161, for example, set out to make the state the first place in the world with a law allowing doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia for the terminally ill. Wilson, the prime sponsor of Proposition 165, poured nearly $2 million from his campaign treasury into an effort to make California the first state to roll back most welfare benefits by as much as 23.5%.

While the three major presidential candidates talked about the desperate need to expand health care coverage universally, Californians voted on a narrower issue in Proposition 166, which would have required the state’s employers to provide basic health insurance to employees working more than 17 1/2 hours a week.

And as the presidential contenders argued about the fairness of the nation’s tax system, backers of Proposition 167 raised the same issue at the state level with their “tax-the-rich” proposal.

Voters were also asked to decide several more parochial issues--bond measures for schools and commuter rail service, a proposal to cancel a newly imposed snack tax, and a constitutional amendment supporters said was needed to prevent the Legislature from raiding public employee and teacher pension funds. Early returns showed voters cautious on pocketbook issues, splitting on school bonds while appearing to reject the rail bonds. But they seemed to favor the pension fund measure.

Supporters of Proposition 161, which they called “the death with dignity act,” sought to give dying patients the choice to end their lives by asking their doctors to administer fatal injections or provide other means for suicide. The initiative applied only to those with fatal conditions and less than six months to live, and it included several procedural safeguards.

But the opposition, including the Roman Catholic Church and the California Medical Assn., charged that the initiative was badly flawed because it failed to require a psychological exam or waiting period.

With his Proposition 165, Wilson sparked a political war between Democrats and Republicans as both parties invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the battle over its passage. A two-pronged proposal, Proposition 165 drew the ire of Democrats because of provisions that enhanced the governor’s power by giving him authority to cut the state budget without the Legislature’s approval if a spending plan was not in place by July 1. The Legislature could stop the cuts by passing an alternative budget within 30 days, although there was a dispute over what could happen if the governor vetoed the alternative.

Republicans lined up in support, attracted by the welfare proposals. Besides the cuts, the initiative denied cash benefits to children born to mothers on welfare. Most taxpayer associations joined the GOP in supporting the proposal while state employee unions, a coalition of churches, charity organizations and children’s advocacy groups opposed it.

Public employee unions were in the forefront of another initiative battle--this time over Proposition 167, a sweeping tax proposal expected to have the greatest impact on California’s taxpayers since Proposition 13.

Proposed by the California Tax Reform Assn., an organization largely financed by the unions, Proposition 167 eliminated tax deductions and exemptions for banks, oil companies and insurance firms and increased tax rates for corporations and upper-income individuals. It sought to repeal the state’s new tax on newspapers, candy, snack food and bottled water and reduced the sales tax by 0.25%. But it raised the tax on insurance premiums and on oil pumped from the ground.

Corporate interests with a stake in the outcome, including banks, insurance firms and oil companies, spent $10.4 million to fight the measure, making it the most expensive proposition contest of the election.

With Proposition 166, the California Medical Assn. set out to do what the Legislature could not--find a way to provide basic medical services to many of the 6 million Californians without health insurance. The critics had charged that the proposal lacked cost controls and could cripple the state’s small businesses by requiring all employers to provide health coverage to full-time employees by 1997.

The opponents of the initiative--an unlikely coalition of insurance companies, unions and consumer groups--argued that it stood in the way of real health care reform. But the doctors group said it was time for the state to protect the interests of the uninsured. And they contended that those who are insured could save as much as $4 billion annually that they now pay in indirect subsidies for those without coverage.

Unlike some elections, the bond measures on this November’s ballot sparked little controversy. Voters were asked to approve a $900-million bond issue to build and modernize public schools and a $1-billion issue to finance construction of subways, trolley lines and Metrolink commuter trains and Amtrak intercity routes.

Propositions 158 and 159 were put on the ballot by the Legislature to undo some of the effects of a popular 1990 initiative that imposed term limits on lawmakers and forced the Legislature to cut back on spending. This year’s initiatives were drafted to give two legislative offices--the auditor general and budget analyst--independence from the Legislature and exempt them from spending limits that voters imposed two years ago.

Other ballot measures included Proposition 160, a measure allowing property tax exemptions for surviving spouses of veterans; Proposition 162, the initiative protecting teacher and public employee pension funds from legislative budget raids; and Proposition 157, a state constitutional amendment that critics say was designed to force the state eventually to pick up maintenance costs for privately built toll roads.