Californians Decide Voucher Measure : Elections: Up to 5.8 million residents also vote on ballot proposition to extend half-cent sales tax. Candidates are selected to replace four legislators.

California voters decided Tuesday whether they wanted to experiment with an education voucher plan that would give parents state-funded scholarships worth about $2,600 each to help pay private school tuition for their school-age children.

The school voucher initiative, Proposition 174, was the most controversial of seven measures on the ballot in Tuesday’s statewide special election.

Local government finance hung in the balance as voters decided whether to make permanent a temporary half-cent state sales tax to help finance fiscally strapped city and county governments.

Up to 5.8 million Californians went to the polls in the election called last spring by Gov. Pete Wilson primarily to allow them to vote on the sales tax proposal, Proposition 172. At that time, Proposition 174 had already qualified for the next regular election in 1994. When Wilson scheduled Tuesday’s voting, Proposition 174 automatically went onto the earlier ballot.

Six other statewide ballot propositions were decided by voters Tuesday, including Proposition 170, which would allow local school bond issues to pass by a majority vote rather than the two-thirds margin that has been the rule for decades. In recent years, about 90% of local bond issues have collected majority support in school district elections but failed because they still fell short of the constitutional two-thirds margin.

Californians also decided hundreds of local elections and ballot measures and voted in four special legislative elections Tuesday.

The local government fiscal crisis arose over the last two years as Wilson and the Legislature were forced to end the state’s bailout of local government imposed in the wake of voter passage of Proposition 13 in 1978--the property tax cut initiative.

With the state government facing a recession-caused fiscal crisis of its own the last two years, nearly $4 billion in local property tax revenues were shifted from local government to the state school finance fund.

To make up part of the loss--about $1.5 billion a year--the governor proposed that the temporary half-cent sales tax, enacted in 1991 to help offset a massive state budget deficit, be continued, with the income turned over by the state to the cities and counties.

The ballot measure was written so that the tax revenues would be dedicated to police and fire department operations and other areas of city and county public safety. Wilson campaigned vigorously throughout the state for Proposition 172, as did police, fire and sheriff’s officials.

The current special local government sales tax would expire Jan. 1 if Proposition 172 lost, and a number of counties and cities would be plunged into a new fiscal crisis, local government officials said.

Other statewide measures decided by California voters Tuesday:

* Proposition 168: Would relax the requirements for a city or county election to approve creation of any proposed low-rent housing project. Elections are now mandatory. Under Proposition 168, a certain number of signatures would have to be collected before an election would be required.

* Proposition 169: Would allow the Legislature to lump all state budget implementation measures, the so-called budget trailer bills, into one piece of legislation. At present, follow-up bills on various sections of the budget must be enacted separately.

* Proposition 171: At present, owners of houses that are damaged or destroyed in a disaster may retain their old property tax assessment when they rebuild or buy a replacement home. This measure would allow them to retain their old assessment even if they decide to build or buy a home in another county in California.

* Proposition 173: Would authorize the sale of bonds with the proceeds going to providing mortgage guaranty insurance for low- and moderate-income first-time home buyers.

Special legislative elections were being held today to fill vacancies created by the resignations of state Sens. Becky Morgan (R-Los Altos) and Wadie P. Deddeh (D-Bonita) and Assemblyman Sam Farr (D-Carmel) and the election of state Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) to a new Senate district.