Lean Times Don’t Imperil Wiesenthal Grant : Finance: Proposed state budget includes $5 million for center’s Museum of Tolerance. School lobbyists oppose the donation, but it has strong backing from both parties.

While disabled people, public school lobbyists, officials from Los Angeles County and others scour the Capitol for money, the private Simon Wiesenthal Center stands to obtain a $5-million grant in the new state budget.

The grant has powerful backers among Democratic and Republican lawmakers, plus Gov. Pete Wilson, who has a senior political adviser sitting on the center’s board of directors.

The money is earmarked for the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance, an acclaimed West Los Angeles facility devoted to teaching about the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, and instilling in visitors, particularly children, a sense of tolerance.

The $5-million grant is one of many relatively small expenditures sprinkled through the proposed $56-billion budget. Many are pet projects of various politicians and go unchallenged, as money for a community swimming pool or a beach erosion project can help garner votes in the Legislature for the budget.

However, the proposed $5 million for the Museum of Tolerance comes from money that otherwise would be spent directly on public schools. Public school lobbyists are trying to kill the grant, or at least make sure it does not come out of school money.

“It doesn’t pass the giggle test,” said Owen Waters, lobbyist for the California Teachers Assn., among the most potent lobbies in Sacramento.

Still, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has friends in powerful places, not the least of whom is the governor. The influential nonprofit organization honored Wilson in New York last May, giving him its National Leadership Award, something that can help him as he runs for President and uses his long-time support for Israel as a plank in his campaign.

In inviting Wilson to attend the dinner, Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said the affair at the Marriott Marquis in New York would be attended by “many leaders of the New York corporate and arts community.”

Hier’s letter noted that Michael Fuchs, chairman of Home Box Office, Alan C. Greenberg, chairman of the investment firm Bear Stearns, and New York financiers Nelson Peltz and Ronald Perelman would be co-hosts of the event. All four are on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s board of trustees, donors to the center, and contributors to politicians of both parties.

Simon Wiesenthal board member Rosalie Zalis, a senior policy adviser to Wilson on women’s issues and Jewish affairs, said Wilson deserved the award because he “has been very instrumental in supporting anti-discrimination bills and expanded teaching” in public schools of the genocide and slavery in world history.

“Was there a quid pro here? I can tell you there wasn’t,” said Zalis, who splits her time between the governor’s staff and Wilson’s campaign staff. “Pete Wilson believes in tolerance. This is a person who is proud of a California institution that works to destroy racism.”

Assembly Democratic leader Willie Brown signed a letter asking for the $5-million grant, as did six Southern California lawmakers. Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) called the museum “unsurpassed in its ability to communicate to children about the dangers of hate and intolerance, at a time when hate and intolerance are at an increase.”

“If it helps teach several thousand children about hate and intolerance, and makes them think, it’s worth the money,” Katz said.

The money would be the second $5-million grant from Sacramento for the Museum of Tolerance since 1986. The first grant helped finance the museum’s construction. Hier said the museum has 350,000 visitors a year, but that the museum loses $1.2 million a year.

Hier said $3 million of the new grant would help pay down the $7.1-million debt on the museum, which cost more than twice its original $20-million estimate to build. The other $2 million would be used for updated exhibits, including ones on Bosnia and right-wing militias.

“It is almost a second home to public schools. They really love the museum,” Hier said. “We want to keep them there. We don’t want to be dated.”

Hier and his supporters said the public expenditure is justified because the museum is heavily used by schoolchildren. More than 70,000 public and private schoolchildren visit the museum yearly.

But Waters and other public school advocates disagree, saying the $5-million expenditure would be illegal under Proposition 98, the complex 1988 initiative that created the current school funding formula. Waters said “70,000 kids might go to McDonald’s every day, but we don’t pick up their lunch tab.”

The grant also has detractors in Los Angeles who say the facility should not rely on public money when many nonprofit groups rely solely on fund raising.

“Basically, you have a very useful museum that is going to the state to get bailed out,” said Los Angeles attorney Howard Friedman, who is on the board of the Jewish Federation and is a past national president of the American Jewish Committee.

Friedman is involved in fund raising for the Skirball Cultural Center, a new museum opening later this year in Los Angeles that will focus on the Diaspora.

“No one would think of going to the government for money,” Friedman said, adding that the funding will come from private sources. “That’s the way these things ought to be done, and not with public funding.”

The Simon Wiesenthal board has influential members and donors such as financier Samuel Belzberg and his family in Canada and Los Angeles, and Henry Casden of the Casden Co., a major builder based in Beverly Hills. Investment banker Richard Blum, husband of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), also is on the board, as are entertainers Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Sinatra.

Some critics of the center point to its salaries, including Hier’s 1994 pay of $225,000, benefits included, as evidence that costs could be cut.

At least six others at the center were paid more than $100,000, according to the most recent tax statements filed by the group. Hier defended the pay, saying it was approved by the center’s board and is commensurate with the duties of the center’s executives.

“We’re already raising money,” Hier said. “We’re maximizing what we can raise. The ones we tapped are still reeling. You can’t go back to the same donors. We think it is a fair request.”