Fight Brews Over Half-Cent Sales Tax Set to End : Politics: County’s GOP legislators insist 1991 hike should expire in June, but Democrats want to extend it to ease budget woes.

The half-cent sales tax increase enacted in cash-starved California two years ago is expected to prompt a fierce fight between Democrats and Republicans. But if Orange County lawmakers have their way, its fate will be swift and certain. They want it to die as scheduled at the end of June.

Unfortunately, county legislators said, the execution could get a bit messy.

Earlier this week, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown said he would seek during the coming budget negotiations to extend the sales tax, which generates about $1.5 billion a year for a state facing a $7.5-billion shortfall. That puts Brown and other Democrats on a collision course with Republicans and Gov. Pete Wilson, who wants to let the tax expire on schedule and slash the deficit with bone-deep spending cuts.

“I suspect this is going to be one of those things that is intertwined with the whole budget mess up to the last minute,” laments state Sen. John R. Lewis (R-Orange), long an anti-tax crusader.

State Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) agreed: “It will be a big sticking point in the final negotiations and be one of the final bargaining chips.”

But she and other local lawmakers also speculate that the tax, championed by Wilson in 1991 as the state’s budget woes began to mount, will ultimately succumb--and not a moment too soon.

“There’s no question in my mind that this tax helped deepen the recession, it and other increases enacted in 1991,” Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-Fullerton) said. “We’ve suffered a lot in California with military base closures, aerospace cutbacks and other economic problems. Overriding it all has been these self-inflicted wounds, and a big part of that in my mind were the tax increases.”

Others agreed.

“I think to keep the tax would be counterproductive to the economy,” said Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress).

Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) said the tax has hurt retail sales, putting a damper on the enthusiasm of consumers to purchase everything from cars to carnations.

“You ask any retailer out there about throwing an extra cost on goods sold to the public and they’ll tell you it dissuades people from purchasing,” he said.

Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange) noted that little of the money generated by the half-cent tax goes to cities and other local agencies, which are threatened with $2.6 billion in cuts under Wilson’s recently released budget blueprint for 1993-94. Besides, Conroy said, the half-cent tax hike “was meant to be a temporary fix, and it didn’t fix anything. So get rid of it.”

Orange County’s lone Democratic assemblyman, Tom Umberg of Garden Grove, is on Army Reserve duty and was unavailable for comment.

Meanwhile, local legislators are warily eyeing the political possibilities. The GOP controls enough votes to block Democrats’ efforts to get a two-thirds vote to reaffirm the tax. But the tax could easily muddy up the budget negotiations and threaten the sort of partisan deadlock that delayed approval of the 1992-93 spending plan for two months and forced the state to issue IOUs to pay its bills.

“Since the Democrats control the budget process, we could end up in another situation where the only budget on the floor is one the Republicans aren’t willing to vote for and an impasse begins again,” Lewis suggested. “But if the governor makes it very clear that this tax is a non-negotiable item, then the Democrats might be more willing to take it off the table and turn to other issues.”

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) holds out little hope for an easy solution. “I think it’s going to stalemate the Legislature,” he said. “Unless business and the people being hurt start to scream a lot louder this year, there will be another stalemate. The Democrats aren’t going to go quietly on giving up this sales tax.”

Ferguson said the looming battle over the tax masks a deeper problem he sees in Sacramento. “There’s no fire in the belly up here at all, and that’s after 2 1/2 years of recession,” Ferguson said. “It’s as if we’re insulated here in these walls. The cries aren’t getting through to the people who have the power.”