2 Lawmakers Seek to Avert Budget Snags : Finances: Legislators advocate a balanced spending plan every two years and quarterly reviews that could trigger automatic cuts.

Two lawmakers who broke ranks with their colleagues last summer in repeated attempts to end a months-long budget stalemate are getting into the act even earlier this year, outlining steps they say could head off a sequel to 1992’s record-setting impasse.

The pair--Democratic Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg of Sacramento and Republican state Sen. Frank Hill of Whittier--suggest balancing the budget over two years instead of one and making it easy for local governments to keep a half-cent sales tax on the books that was imposed by the state two years ago as a temporary measure.

To guard against further declines in tax receipts, the lawmakers advocate a quarterly review of the state’s fiscal position that would trigger automatic cuts in various programs if yet another deficit is imminent.

In addition, Isenberg and Hill have endorsed a proposal by state Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill to reorganize state and local services with the aim of minimizing duplication and untangling crossed lines of authority.

It’s not yet clear how the ideas advanced by Hill and Isenberg will be received by the Legislature and Gov. Pete Wilson, who have barely begun to come to grips with a projected $8-billion gap that must be closed to balance the budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

But the two outspoken lawmakers proved to be ahead of their time with their compromise proposals last year. Much of what they recommended was adopted as part of the settlement that ended the 63-day stalemate. Other pieces that Wilson criticized at the time found their way into the governor’s budget proposal in January.

Isenberg said Tuesday that the two legislators acted after watching colleagues sit almost mute since Wilson proposed his new budget Jan. 8. Wilson’s $51-billion spending plan is balanced through the help of billions in risky assumptions, he said. But so far, no one in the Legislature has offered an alternative.

“Right now, no one is saying much of anything,” Isenberg said. “If there’s any introspection going on, it’s unknown to me. People just don’t know what to do and they’re leaving the whole thing alone.”

Indeed, Wilson had set March 1 as a deadline for the Legislature to act on his proposals to cut spending in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. But lawmakers ignored his requests for reductions in health and welfare programs and a retroactive repeal of the renters tax credit, which would have saved the state about $500 million this year.

Steve Olsen, Wilson’s deputy finance director, declined to comment on the specifics offered by Hill and Isenberg. But he said anything that gets the Legislature moving would be useful.

“The Legislature needs to act as soon as possible,” Olsen said. “The longer they wait the harder it is going to be.”

Unlike last year, when Hill and Isenberg offered a detailed list of proposals to balance the budget, the two legislators only suggested a handful of specific measures and a few broad ideas Tuesday that they hoped would point the debate in the right direction. They outlined their principles in interviews with The Times and in a panel discussion at a meeting of the California Chamber of Commerce.

Continuing his tradition as a maverick Republican, Hill broke from the GOP position that a balanced budget must be adopted for every 12-month period. There is nothing wrong, he said, with eliminating the deficit over two years instead of one, as long as the budget relies on conservative economic projections and includes automatic triggers to cut spending if the anticipated tax receipts do not materialize.

Wilson has opposed this idea to roll over the year-end deficit into the next fiscal year. But Hill said the governor is doing the same thing under another name by having the state borrow $940 million and lend it to the schools. In effect, Wilson is forcing the schools to engage in deficit spending, he said.

Hill also predicted that Wilson eventually will have to back away from his insistence that a continuation of the half-cent temporary sales tax would damage the economy. Although Wilson wants to let each county board of supervisors go to the voters for approval to impose the tax locally, Hill said, it makes more sense to give county officials the power to continue the tax without a vote of the people.

At the same time, the two lawmakers are suggesting that the state assume more direct control of some services that are shared with counties and give up control over others.

Isenberg, for example, favors shifting more criminal justice costs to the counties. He suggested having local government imprison all but the most violent offenders.

“Why should we not place the responsibility for law and punishment where the crime is committed and the punishment is imposed?” he asked.

But both lawmakers said they are not wedded to any particular proposal as much as they are committed to initiating a dialogue so a long-term budget solution can be enacted by the June 15 deadline in the state Constitution.