NEWS ANALYSIS : A Survival Plan and Backdrop for the ’94 Race

In the California boom days of three decades ago, a governor’s budget was a blueprint to a boundless future of expanding freeway systems, great universities, a water project so vast it could be seen from the moon and the finest parks system anywhere.

On Friday, Gov. Pete Wilson presented a new state budget that at best is a survival plan to get California through the darkest economic days since the start of World War II.

The budget this year is a backdrop for the 1994 reelection campaign of the Republican Wilson, who won in 1990 by promising to give the state a tuneup, to make the engine of government hum efficiently on all cylinders again. But now, with the state battered by economic, natural and social upheaval, there is a widening view that government needs a major overhaul, that the institutions that served the state well for so many decades are already breaking down in the teeth of today’s problems.

Wilson is banking on a job creation program that he believes will stimulate the economy and in turn provide the tax revenues the state requires to provide the governmental services that voters have come to expect.

“We must shape our future, not suffer it,” Wilson said in his State of the State address Wednesday evening, attempting to project himself as a confident leader capable of getting California moving again.

But his major prospective challenger for the governorship in 1994, state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, already has signaled that she believes more sweeping reform is needed to carry California through a wrenching economic, social and political transition.

Look for a lot of talk about “vision” and “change” between now and November, 1994.

There is rising talk in Sacramento about the need for basic reform throughout California’s multitiered structure of government.

As the drought has generated demands for water project restructuring, the budget crisis of the last three years seems to be the catalyst for an overhaul and streamlining of government.

One Wilson aide said this week that upon viewing the grim budget figures for 1993-94, his first thought was, “Oh my God, Stu Spencer was right.”

When Wilson first pondered whether to run for governor in 1989, he conferred with a variety of trusted advisers. Veteran political consultant Stuart Spencer told Wilson he did not think anyone could really govern California; its problems were just too overwhelming. Stay in the Senate, Spencer advised.

Wilson ran nevertheless and his office has been plagued from the day he was inaugurated by economic, natural and social calamity, from drought and earthquakes to the Los Angeles riots and a 1992 election that was a political disaster for the GOP.

The most urgent demand has been the state fiscal crisis, which seemed to reach its nadir in 1992 when Wilson and the Democrats who control the state Legislature were embarrassed by a summer-long stalemate and the payment of bills with IOUs. This year could be even more painful.

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City), a close ally of Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), is among those who believe Wilson and the Democrats will not risk another impasse locked in hand-to-hand combat for personal and partisan honor like Gothic chieftains. Despite some talk to the contrary, Katz says the Democrats have no grand strategy to deny the governor everything he wants in hopes of crippling his chances for reelection.

The key to real cooperation between the executive and legislative branches is expected to be the personal relationship between Wilson and Speaker Brown. So far, both are talking cooperation.

If there is a political clash, it is more likely to occur outside the framework of the budget, Katz said. An early test will be Wilson’s selection of a successor to Democrat William Bennett on the State Board of Equalization. The choice, which must be ratified by the Legislature, would give the GOP a majority on the five-member board for the first time in decades.

The appointment of a highly partisan Republican is the sort of glove-in-the-face challenge that could restart the Wilson-Brown warfare, he said.

There is growing talk in Sacramento of a far broader political agenda, however: to dig into the very roots of government to make it respond more promptly and efficiently to people’s needs in a time of economic and social transition in California.

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) is pushing for a restructuring and breakup of the massive Los Angeles school district. Wilson’s proposed cuts in state aid to cities and counties--in effect, the end to the state bailout enacted after the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978--are certain to fuel demands for an overhaul of local government services and finance.

Both Wilson and Speaker Brown have plans to attack growth-related problems and to sort out conflicting and overlapping jurisdictions of local governments, planning agencies and special function districts like the Air Quality Management District.

In his budget, Wilson proposes to abolish dozens of longstanding state boards and commissions.

Treasurer Brown has already put even more dramatic change on the table.

In a “vision of California” speech last October, she said California needs far more than tinkering with business incentives, the cutting of red tape and reform of workers’ compensation, although she endorsed those ideas as well.

“California’s biggest weakness today is not its business climate or the flow of immigrants into our state,” she said. “It’s a government system that has become . . . old, lumbering and unable to move fast enough with changing demands on its services.”

A factor that could bring change this year is the arrival of 27 new members of the state Assembly. As the first freshman class serving under term limits, the new Assembly members are impatient to get things done and will have a low tolerance for partisan bickering, several of them have said.

Democrat Hilda L. Solis of El Monte, asked about the possibility of a budget deadlock this year, said: “We haven’t got time for that.”