Taco Bell Says Stay Might Be Temporary : Relocations: The fast-food company says it will take a wait-and-see attitude about moving out of state.

Taco Bell Corp.’s decision to keep its headquarters and 1,000 jobs in California is only a temporary arrangement that gives the company more time to evaluate its expansion needs and assess whether California is truly becoming friendlier to business, its chairman said Tuesday.

John E. Martin, who is also chief executive of the Mexican-style fast-food chain, did not rule out moving to Texas or another state later, saying the company will do whatever is “best or most practical.”

“My hope would be that we’ll be able to keep our core business here,” he said. “But if the climate in California were to go south from a business perspective, then we’d look at our other options.”

Martin’s comments came in his first interview since Taco Bell concluded a yearlong, nationwide search for a new headquarters site by declaring in June that it would stay in Irvine. The remarks signal that any prolonged celebration over the company’s decision may be premature.

The emergency “red team” of state government and business leaders who worked to persuade Taco Bell to stay has acknowledged that the fight isn’t over. In a recent letter to Martin, team leader H. Fred Mickelson, a Southern California Edison Co. executive, said the team does not consider the company’s decision to be a done deal. Additional meetings with Taco Bell executives have already been scheduled, Mickelson said Tuesday.

The chain ended its nationwide search by signing a $41-million, 15-year lease at its current location that gives it options at each five-year interval to cancel the contract. That option, Martin said, gives the company the flexibility it wanted for its wait-and-see approach.

Taco Bell has become a symbol for business owners who believe California public officials have driven companies out of state with their hostile attitude. The company’s widely publicized search for a new home tested California’s will to change that perception.

“There has been a certain degree of arrogance in this state toward business,” Martin said. The attitude for 20 years has been that “business needed the state a heck of a lot more than the other way around, that business was lucky to have the state.”

But now legislators are recognizing that business carries an unfair burden, he said, and proposals such as a 6% tax credit for corporations building or expanding in California would help the state compete against aggressive, pro-business states such as Texas. Martin said many officials still oppose providing any help to business. “Old habits die hard,” he said.

What impressed Martin about Texas, Georgia and North Carolina--states visited by a group of executives during the search--was that their public officials appeared eager to work with companies to solve any problems that surface between government and industry. California, he said, is just getting to the point where officials are acknowledging that “maybe you aren’t just a nuisance.”

He credited Gov. Pete Wilson, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), state Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) and state Controller Gray Davis for leading efforts to make business more welcome in the state.