Wilson Makes Renewed Call for Moral Values

Gov. Pete Wilson on Monday called on Californians to accept the challenge of “recasting and reinvigorating our culture” by instilling the moral standards needed to curb the problems of teenage pregnancy and troubled youth.

In the sixth State of the State address Wilson has given to a joint session of the Senate and Assembly, the governor proposed a series of carrot-and-stick incentives intended to encourage lifestyle changes consistent with the themes of Republican family values: personal responsibility, abstinence and marriage.

Wilson also placed blame for some of the social decay that causes drug use, crime and poverty on familiar villains such as welfare dependency, permissive courts and deadbeat fathers. The root of the state’s most critical issues, Wilson argued, are youths who become burdens to society because they grow up without proper role models.

“The children of unwed mothers are overwhelmingly more likely to drop out of school, to abuse drugs, to land in jail, to have their own children out of wedlock and to become trapped in welfare dependency,” the governor said.

“All of the problems tearing apart the fabric of our society have deep roots in this exploding epidemic of out-of-wedlock births,” he continued. “We must arrest and reverse it or suffer the loss of the California we’ve known and cherished.”

Political observers suggested that Wilson came to the Legislature Monday in need of a political home run since his public image suffered last year after an embarrassing retreat from the presidential race. They portrayed his speech as a crucial step in determining whether the governor will recapture the political standing he needs to be a productive officeholder during the three years left in his term.

Based on reactions, Wilson’s comments struck a moderate and cooperative tone--especially compared to past years when he provoked his critics with contentious rhetoric.

This time, Wilson never mentioned two of his most controversial issues--illegal immigration and affirmative action. Assembly Democratic Leader Richard Katz of Sylmar even noted that “many of his ideas are in Democratic bills.”

Bill Lockyer, the Senate Democratic leader from Hayward, also considered Wilson’s speech “balanced and positive.” Ideologically, he said, Wilson “paddled on both sides of the stream.”

Wilson opened his speech in the Assembly chambers Monday evening by making light of his White House campaign that went bust last September. “I’ve been sent here tonight by popular demand of the voters--of Iowa and of New Hampshire,” he joked.

He then launched into a discussion of the broad themes and goals he hopes to pursue this year. Details of the governor’s plan, particularly financial spending, will come Wednesday when Wilson introduces his proposed budget for the 1996-97 fiscal year.

The fact that Wilson used the opportunity to highlight social problems also represented a shift in emphasis from past State of the State addresses, when the governor focused mainly on jobs and the economy.

Monday, after noting the enormous difficulties of the state’s recession, Wilson said the economic skid has been reversed and, for the first time, he confirmed that officials expect a $1-billion surplus in state coffers by June.

Wilson said California’s rate of job creation has moved from 50th to first in the nation. And this spring he said the state will have recovered about 730,000 jobs it lost during the recession and the massive defense cutbacks during the last five years.

Still, Wilson repeated the need for a package of economic reforms that went largely unfulfilled last year even though they represented the centerpiece of his 1995 State of the State speech.

Most important, he promised to continue his effort to pass a 15% cut in personal and corporate income taxes phased in over three years. He also repeated his intent to strike government regulations--particularly on the environment--and to seek tort reform that would reduce the vulnerability of state businesses to lawsuits.

For Republican lawmakers, Wilson’s commitment to the tax cut was a rallying point in the speech. Former GOP Assembly Leader Jim Brulte, who carried the tax cut legislation unsuccessfully last year, predicted things will be different now.

“It’s an election year,” he said. “I don’t think the Senate Democrats want to oppose tax cuts.”

Lockyer gently pushed aside the issue Monday, saying only that Wilson proposed “a variety of new spending proposals which does not square with a tax cut. So, we need to work through the fiscal details.”

Highlighting a new front in his effort to shrink state government, Wilson also promised that in April he will unveil a plan to turn many of the government’s functions over to private operation.

The governor did not provide details about his plan. Instead, administration officials said an interagency task force is conducting a “top-to-bottom” review of state operations aimed at identifying services that can be done cheaper and more efficiently by private companies.

Wilson emphasized, however, that his top priority will be social reform. For political and economic reasons, the governor’s aides said Wilson believes his greatest opportunity to improve the quality of life in California will come from changes to welfare and youth programs.

Following the lead of conservative thinkers such as Charles Murray, who prompted a national discussion in 1993 with an article identifying out-of-wedlock births as the nation’s most dangerous time bomb, Wilson also singled out the problem as California’s top priority.

In a briefing before the speech, Wilson aides cited statistics that show 70% of the long-term inmates in state prisons were born to unwed mothers. Officials also said out-of-wedlock births in California have increased 44% in the past nine years and now account for about 25% of all deliveries.

Wilson proposed to discourage unwed mothers with a plan to stop additional welfare benefits for women who have babies while they are receiving public assistance. At the same time, he proposed a series of grass-roots efforts to discourage teenage pregnancy, including a $15.7-million media campaign, $34 million to fortify specialized community groups and a public-private mentoring program for at-risk youth.

On welfare, the governor also indicated he is already banking on hopes that Washington will pass a welfare reform bill that grants far more authority for social spending control to state governments through block-grant financing.

The plan has passed the Congress, but Clinton has warned that the reforms do not provide adequate protections for the poor.

Still, Wilson provided the first glimpse of how he would fulfill his promise for a new system that “doesn’t just reform welfare, but replaces it.” The new plan was expected to make it more difficult to maintain a life on welfare, but also would provide more training and incentives to return to the work force.

In the plan, Wilson said he would drop the nation’s largest welfare program--Aid to Families With Dependent Children--and replace it with four programs designed to better address the needs of modern recipients.

Officials said the governor believes the aid program for families is flawed because it was designed during a period in America’s history when men were considered the breadwinners and mothers were unable to adequately provide for children in the event of the father’s death or divorce.

As a result, Wilson complains that the program discourages work and provides a disincentive to marriage. The new programs he proposed would make eligibility for assistance based on the applicant’s ability to work, income and family size.

Wilson administration officials said the welfare reform proposals will not be part of the 1996 budget released Wednesday since they are still contingent on approval from Washington.

Wilson used the same formula of combining a package of incentives and disincentives to resolve problems with juvenile crime and out-of-wedlock births.

To address juvenile offenders, for example, the governor proposed a crackdown on the “dangerously lenient” criminal sentences handed out to youths, including a provision that would treat 14-year-old defendants as adults.

He also offered state financing for hundreds of new police officers through a program in which Californians would be allowed to check a box on their state income tax returns and designate 1% of their money go to public safety.

Meanwhile, Wilson hoped to deter youths from a life of crime by creating a statewide system of 20 single-sex public schools--10 for girls and 10 for boys. The governor said he hoped the schools would provide the role models that are necessary to counter the attraction of gang membership for youths who lack a traditional family.

At the same time, he proposed that children in troubled schools should be allowed to escape and go elsewhere. As a result, he offered a pilot program in which students attending schools ranked among the state’s bottom 5% scholastically would receive a voucher that would allow them to attend classes at any private or public institution in the state.

The voucher idea was rejected by voters in a statewide initiative in 1993.

* NEWS ANALYSIS: Address was bright with promise but short on details. A13

* SPEECH EXCERPTS: A13