NEWS ANALYSIS : Governor’s Race Ignoring Budget : Politics: It may be the most pressing issue facing California. But Wilson, his leading challengers and Democratic legislators are all acting as if an anticipated $5-billion shortfall just won’t happen.

As the candidates for governor traverse the state discussing economic growth, crime, education and immigration, perhaps the most daunting problem facing California’s next chief executive--the budget--gets scarcely a mention.

With a new fiscal year looming July 1, it is looking more and more as if Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and Democratic legislators will paper over much of a $5-billion shortfall with unrealistic assumptions and fiscal sleight of hand.

Unwilling to raise taxes or cut popular programs, the Capitol’s policy-makers appear ready to wave a magic political wand and make the problem disappear, at least until after the November general election. The main fiction will be a far too optimistic assumption about how much money the federal government will give the state for services to illegal immigrants.

“Everybody’s decided that apparently the problem is going to go away,” said Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg, a Sacramento Democrat with a reputation for candor. “We will have no deficit. We will fudge.”

With the exception of two candidates trailing in the polls--Democratic state Sen. Tom Hayden and Republican Ron Unz--none of Wilson’s challengers have offered specific ideas about balancing the budget.

This is especially ironic because, unlike many of the other issues discussed in the campaign, the budget is a matter that is a governor’s responsibility and one over which the chief executive exercises enormous control.

In January, Wilson proposed a $55.4-billion budget that boosts prison spending, allows public schools to keep pace with enrollment and offers modest tax breaks for businesses and middle-income taxpayers.

But Wilson was able to balance his spending plan only by assuming that the federal government would hand the state $3.1 billion in new money this year, most of it as reimbursement for the cost of providing education, emergency health care and prison cells for illegal immigrants.

It now appears the state will be fortunate to get $500 million from Congress. But Wilson is expected to submit a revised budget later this month that continues to rely on his outdated figures. Because Congress will not adopt a final federal spending plan until October, the state can pass its budget in June and then wait for Congress to act.

To put the problem in perspective, consider that the likely gap between projected revenue and anticipated spending is more than the state will spend this year on prisons or higher education or welfare. It represents more than one-third of the state’s contribution to public schools.

Wilson, if he is reelected, or his successor will have to deal with this mess next January.

One reason for what appears to be a conspiracy of silence is the fact that Wilson, by relying on the immigration money, has put his Democratic foes in a political box. If they complain that he is being unrealistic, they must admit that their fellow Democrats in Washington will fail to come through with the money.

A deeper cause for the caution may be the simple fact voters appear to care little about the budget as an abstract problem but would take offense at any specific proposals to balance it either by raising taxes or cutting services.

“They’re pretending the budget crisis isn’t there so they don’t have to say whether they’re going to raise taxes again or whether they’re going to cut budgets, and if so, where they’re going to cut,” said Unz, the wealthy Silicon Valley businessman who recently entered the Republican primary race against Wilson.

Unz opposes tax increases and favors deep cuts in social programs to balance the budget. But he has yet to enumerate those cuts, a task he says he will complete in the next week or two and unveil as a comprehensive proposal.

Hayden, the Democratic dark horse, has published the most complete set of budget principles of any of the challengers, although even his treatise is vague on crucial details.

His broad goal, Hayden says, is to shift the state’s priorities from prisons to education while raising taxes on business property and cutting fees for college students.

He would pump an additional $600 million into public schools every year until California reached the national average in spending per pupil, and he would establish a task force to find ways to cut $1 billion from state spending without sacrificing services.

If his plan fell short of a balanced budget, Hayden said, he would propose additional tax increases and cuts in a 3-1 ratio until he solved the problem.

Unlike Hayden, the two leading Democratic candidates--state Treasurer Kathleen Brown and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi--have been silent on the subject of balancing the budget.

Garamendi is a former chairman of the Senate Revenue and Taxation committee. According to Darry Sragow, his campaign director, Garamendi “knows the budget inside and out.” But so far, he has not been sharing much of that knowledge with voters.

“If you accumulated everything John Garamendi has said you’d have some clues about the Garamandi budget when he becomes governor,” Sragow said. “John has not presented a document that could be labeled a look at the Garamendi budget. We haven’t packaged it that way.”

Garamendi has proposed no tax increases other than a temporary boost in the sales tax to pay for earthquake recovery. Like Wilson and Brown, he supports a tax break for businesses that create jobs. He has not placed a dollar value on his proposal.

On the spending side, Sragow said Garamendi supports reducing the cost of prisons, but not by releasing anyone now incarcerated. He would repeal the Inmate Bill of Rights, which he voted for as a legislator, and use so-called boot camps to reduce the cost of building prisons. It is not clear how much money, if any, either proposal would save.

On public schools, the state’s single biggest expenditure, it is Garamendi’s view that “we’ve got to put as much money into education as it takes to do the job.” Among his specific proposals is a boost for after-school programs.

Brown has been even less specific. Although last year she proposed using a portion of the state sales tax to pay off the deficit over a period of years, this year she has offered no such plan.

She has suggested some increases in education funding to be paid for by cutting administration. And although she supports the “three strikes and you’re out” sentencing measure, she has not offered any way to pay for the increased prison costs it is expected to generate.

Brown’s advisers said she has been reluctant to comment directly on the budget because as treasurer she wants first to give the Wall Street credit rating agencies her assessment of the state’s financial stability. Soon, they said, she will go public with specific ideas about the budget.

“Basically, we believe long-term economic health will lead to long-term deficit reduction, and Kathleen Brown has a program to do that and create 1 million new jobs,” said John Whitehurst, Brown’s campaign press secretary.

Sragow, Garamendi’s top adviser, said he considers the budget debate to be outside the scope of the governor’s race.

“You can argue every one of these specifics for days,” he said. “But the real issue is what is your general approach to governing, and that in turn gets reflected in the budget. This is not an election about the budget. This is an election about governing.”