Panel OKs Penalties for Budget Delays : Legislature: Rules committee approves blocking salaries if state spending plan isn’t approved by June 15 deadline. Proposal faces tough fight before full Senate.

The Senate Rules Committee voted Wednesday to prohibit the payment of salaries to the governor and state legislators for each day they fail to enact a state budget beyond the June 15 constitutional deadline.

Over Republican opposition, the committee voted 3 to 2 to approve the proposed constitutional amendment by Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco), which also would reduce the vote needed in each house to approve the budget bill from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority.

Majority Democrats have complained for years that minority Republicans, particularly in the Assembly, have been able to muscle through concessions and thwart passage of the budget by withholding the votes needed to reach the two-thirds margin.

In theory, the forfeiture of salaries, coupled with a less stringent voting standard, would make it more likely that the Legislature would enact a budget by the June 15 deadline that is required by the state Constitution but is routinely ignored.

Under the proposed legislation, the governor and lawmakers would permanently forfeit their pay for each day the state went without a budget beyond June 15. In addition, lawmakers would be denied their $100 a day in tax-free expense allowances.

In recent years, legislators have voluntarily gone without their salaries and expense allowances. However, when the budget was enacted, they were paid retroactively.

Outside the hearing room Wednesday, Kopp, one of the Legislature’s two independents, conceded that his proposal probably would face a stiff fight from Republicans.

Kopp’s plan faces a tougher test before the full Senate, where it requires a two-thirds vote for approval rather than the majority required at the committee level. If the Legislature agrees to the plan, it would be put before the voters next year.

Last year, the Rules Committee killed a similar Kopp proposal by refusing to vote on it.

Gov. Pete Wilson included a similar pay penalty provision in his welfare reduction ballot initiative, which voters defeated in November.

Last summer, California went a record 78 days beyond the June 15 deadline for the Legislature to enact the budget, after which the governor has until the July 1 start of the fiscal year to sign it.

“This is a rule without sanction,” Kopp told the committee. “How many people would abide by speeding rules if there was not a sanction provided?”

Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), who has denounced no-pay proposals as grandstanding that would unfairly injure legislators who do a good job, voted for Kopp’s combination of pay penalties and a majority vote to pass the budget. “It’s probably a healthy thing to do,” he said.

But Sen. William Craven (R-Oceanside), who voted against the plan, said members of one house might pass a budget bill only to see it tied up in the second house. As a result, he said, members of the first house would be forced to surrender their pay even though they had voted to approve the budget.

“That’s part of being in the Legislature. That goes with the territory,” Kopp told him, conceding that it might be unfair to some.