Wilson, Leaders Seek Statewide Sales Tax Vote : Spending: Compromise budget runs into bipartisan resistance in the Assembly. It would shift $2.6 billion in property taxes from cities and counties to schools.

Gov. Pete Wilson and legislative leaders crafted a compromise spending plan Sunday that quickly ran into strong bipartisan resistance in the state Assembly.

The plan would cut state services, shift a quarter of local government’s property tax revenue to the schools and trigger a statewide vote in November on whether to make permanent a temporary half-cent surcharge on the sales tax.

Elements of the plan were debated late Sunday night in the Assembly and an initial vote went against the plan 40 to 31. It requires 54 votes from the 80-member Assembly for passage. Debate continued early today and the Assembly planned further voting on pieces of the multi-bill legislative package.

Because the proposal would hit Los Angeles County especially hard, the county’s sizable legislative delegation was under pressure to oppose it.

Wilson and the Democratic and Republican leaders in the Assembly and Senate disclosed the plan as they emerged from nearly 20 hours of closed-door negotiations spread over two days.

They said no one liked the plan but each agreed it was the best the state could do under the circumstances.

“This was a wise and good compromise,” Wilson said. “Not everyone is going to be happy. In fact, there’s something to make all of us unhappy. It is that kind of a thing. We are stretching resources and they just don’t stretch quite far enough. But essentially, I think it has been an equitable distribution.”

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) said there was not much in the budget for the people he represents.

“My constituents are getting a budget that operates the state with the meager resources the state has for the next 12 months,” he said.

The centerpiece of the plan is a $2.6-billion shift of property tax revenue from cities, counties and special districts to the schools. Every dollar transferred from local government to education saves the state a dollar it would otherwise have to give the schools from its own treasury.

To help local government survive that loss of revenue, the leaders proposed extending the state’s half-cent sales tax surcharge through the end of the year and shifting the $700 million it would raise to counties. In November, at a statewide special election, voters would be asked to make the tax permanent and dedicate its revenue to law enforcement and other public safety programs.

The ballot measure would be a constitutional amendment designed to circumvent voter-approved Proposition 98, which would require that the lion’s share of the sales tax revenue go to schools. A majority vote would be needed for passage.

Wilson originally wanted the sales tax to expire on schedule June 30. He later agreed to extend it for six months but said the November vote would have to be on a county-by-county basis to expand local control over taxes and spending. In the end, he agreed to a statewide vote but insisted that the money go to local government.

Wilson had wanted deeper cuts in health, welfare and higher education programs than he settled for. But he won restoration of $400 million in prison spending that lawmakers had wanted to delete from his budget.

The proposed $52-billion spending plan would cut grants to the poor, aged, blind and disabled by 2.7% and suspend the renters tax credit. Higher education would get about $150 million more than Wilson proposed, which legislators want to use to allow for smaller fee increases than the University of California and the California State University had planned.

Community college fees would rise from $10 a unit to $15 over two years but would be capped at $300 a year.

Primary and secondary schools would get about the same amount as they spent this year, about $4,200 per student in state and local funds.

Lobbyists for various interest groups swarmed outside the governor’s office as the leaders disclosed details of the plan, then moved quickly to positions outside the Assembly and Senate chambers, where they hoped to persuade rank-and-file lawmakers to turn it down.

The most vociferous opposition was coming from representatives of California counties, which oppose the transfer of $2.6 billion in local property tax revenue to the schools.

County officials said they fear that their services would be hurt even if the voters extend the half-cent sales tax surcharge and the revenue raised is given to local government. Should voters reject the measure, counties say, their programs will be devastated.

“There are other ways to do this without taking it from the hide of cities and counties,” said Ed Edelman, chairman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who was in the Capitol to lobby the county’s legislative delegation.

Yet there was disagreement among Los Angeles County law enforcement officials about how the plan would affect their services.

“Law enforcement in Los Angeles fares well,” said Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti. He said that if the sales tax extension passes, law enforcement would be guaranteed no less money than they spent in the 1992-93 fiscal year.

“The governor and the Speaker have both delivered as they said they would,” he said.

But Sheriff Sherman Block said the final leadership plan, compared to earlier versions, was “the difference between devastating and critical.”

To try to undercut the opposition from counties, the leadership group included a provision that would allow hard-pressed counties to get permission from a state commission to reduce welfare payments to able-bodied single adults if they could prove that they needed the money for law enforcement instead.

Acknowledging that many lawmakers were under intense pressure to pass a budget before the start of the fiscal year July 1 and thus avoid a repeat of last summer’s 63-day stalemate, Edelman said: “A bad budget that strips cities and counties of property tax revenue is worse than no budget at all.”

But Edelman and others opposed to the budget deal were waging an uphill battle.

The only hope of blocking legislative ratification of the agreement seemed to be in rallying rank-and-file lawmakers to kill the plan because it included provisions hammered out in secret without the participation of legislators who are expert in various fields.

Wilson paid a rare visit to the Assembly chambers to lobby Republicans in a private caucus to vote for the plan.

State Sen. Alfred E. Alquist (D-San Jose), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, called the Legislature’s joint budget-writing committee into session Sunday afternoon and demanded that the governor appear to explain himself. Wilson refused.

“What I clearly resent is being handed a decision made behind closed doors of which I had no part,” Alquist said.

The strategy Sunday night was to put the package of bills to a vote first in the Assembly, where support for the plan appeared to be stronger. The leaders hoped that a favorable vote in the lower house would put pressure on the Senate to go along.

Senate Leader David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), who among the leadership group was least content with the agreement, said he doubted that his house would block it if the Assembly approved the plan.

“I have been a holdout in the past. It ain’t fun,” Roberti said. “I’ve never seen where it gets you anywhere.”

Times staff writer Carl Ingram contributed to this story.