McClintock Will Form Anti-Tax Watchdog : Thousand Oaks: The former assemblyman is moving to Sacramento. The group plans to monitor legislators’ votes.

Tom McClintock, the quintessential political outsider during his 10 years in the Assembly, is leaving Ventura County for Sacramento to continue spreading his message against new taxes and government waste.

The Thousand Oaks Republican, whose harsh appraisals of state budgets irked both Democrats and Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, is forming a new group to track lawmakers’ votes on tax issues and to document what the group determines is unnecessary spending by state agencies, associates said Wednesday.

Defeated by a wide margin in his bid for Congress in November, McClintock announced that he was quitting politics. But associates said he will become chief executive officer of the new Center for the California Taxpayer on Feb. 1.

The new watchdog group will operate as a tax-free educational organization, not a political action committee, under the aegis of the National Tax Limitation Foundation, a 14-year-old organization based in Roseville near Sacramento, said foundation Chairman Lewis K. Uhler.

“We’re certainly going forward with this,” said Uhler, who is also chairman of the new taxpayer center. “The financial support is there, and the need is clearly there.”

The National Tax Limitation Foundation was a co-sponsor of the successful 1990 ballot initiative that limits the number of terms that state legislators can serve. Last year it also backed a successful term-limit measure for California’s congressional delegation.

McClintock, 36, refused public comment on his new job, saying to do so would be premature. But associates said the former assemblyman has solicited support for the new tax center since he lost his bid for Congress to Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles) two months ago.

Uhler said McClintock has worked out of the tax foundation’s Roseville office since he left the Assembly in early December. He will go on the payroll next month, Uhler said.

“I was the guy that called him,” Uhler said. “I told him he may be able to be more effective in this context than as one of 80 Assembly persons. I think we’re going to have a pervasive influence.”

McClintock, who was raised in Thousand Oaks and still lives there, plans to move his wife, Lori, and their two young children to the Sacramento area after he firms up support for his new foundation, friends said this week.

The new tax center has received financial commitments from several large companies and private foundations and expects to be operating with three employees and a $345,000 annual budget by the end of its first year, Uhler said.

“The interest level is very broad,” he said.

The new center will prepare a score card on legislators, so taxpayers and the news media can readily identify lawmakers who vote for tax increases and wasteful programs, Uhler said.

A December solicitation letter signed by McClintock explains the center’s mission.

“I believe that this project will plug several crucial gaps in the taxpayers’ line of defense,” McClintock says in the letter. “Astoundingly, no organization in California tracks and rates the votes of legislators on tax and waste issues, nor issues a complete catalogue on state government waste, nor provides a regular commentary on California fiscal issues . . . , nor maintains a comprehensive report of a legislator’s fiscal record for the public.”

McClintock said his center will do all four.

Before his defeat in November, McClintock was considered a rising star in conservative Republican politics, having garnered high marks for his often-accurate analysis of the state’s budget crisis.

McClintock’s return to Sacramento prompted comments Wednesday from Gov. Wilson’s office and from one of the Assembly’s Democratic leaders, with whom he has fought for 10 years.

After Wilson backed a tax increase in 1991, McClintock said the governor had “declared war on the taxpayers of California.”

But Dan Schnur, communications director for the governor, said that Wilson now welcomes McClintock back to Sacramento “as another strong anti-tax voice.”

“The governor and Tom McClintock have had their differences,” Schnur said. “But seeing how the governor has just proposed a budget without tax increases or deficit spending, we’d hope Tom would be very supportive.”

Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria) said he thinks that the tax limitation foundation “got the right guy” when recruiting McClintock.

“He has a perspective that needs to be heard, and I’m not surprised he’s going to remain active,” O’Connell said. “His venom has been directed more at Pete Wilson the last couple of years anyway. He laid a much better glove on Wilson than any Democrat did.”