Lockyer’s Top Budget Task: Help Schools

Without question, California’s most powerful state legislator is Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer, now that Willie Brown has exited. So as the lawmakers venture into their annual budget negotiations, it is instructive to hear what this astute Democrat considers to be the Legislature’s top three priorities.

They are:

* Improve public schools, especially by reducing class sizes in grades K-3.

* Help the business climate, probably with tax breaks targeted at slumping and/or growth industries.

* Get control of runaway prison costs, or in a few years there will be little money for higher education.

This is not to derogate the importance of dozens of other issues--earthquake insurance, gambling regulation, welfare--but schools, taxes and prisons are “musts” in Lockyer’s view.

Politically, the motivations are these:

First and foremost, voters are demanding action on schools. This has risen to the top of the list of “most important issues” in practically every poll.

“Our constituents’ No. 1 policy goal is to improve public education,” says Lockyer (D-Hayward). “It’s across the board--Republicans, Democrats, independents, black, white, brown, all the subgroups.”

Tax cuts--it almost doesn’t matter what kind--are demanded by Republican politicians. They control the Assembly and the governor’s office, and it’s their price for doing business with Democrats. Besides, most Democrats don’t want to be seen in this election year as being stubbornly opposed to every tax cut.

But Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposed 15% income tax cut already is dead and buried in the Senate.

As for prisons, voters insist on locking up the bad guys. Fine, but at this rate, there soon won’t be money for much of anything else except K-12 schools and welfare. Big chunks already have been taken out of welfare, including money for the aged, blind and disabled.

*

“There are two issues involving prisons,” Lockyer notes. “One is we’re wasting a lot of money and that should offend any taxpayer. The second is that costs are growing so fast we’re going to cannibalize higher education. So there’s a double reason to figure out something smart.”

On Wednesday, Lockyer outlined a new proposal to a two-house conference committee on prisons, which he chairs. The Senate leader proposed building six new prisons over the next six years, 10 fewer than Wilson wants. He’d save $6 billion in building costs and $400 million annually in operating costs.

Among Lockyer’s ideas:

Pay Los Angeles County to keep state prisoners in its vacant Mira Loma jail. Permit alternative sentencing--”day reporting,” electronic surveillance, community work--for relatively minor, nonviolent first-timers, such as petty thieves. Invest in better drug treatment for prisoners. Permit more minimum-security inmates to be incarcerated in private prisons. Put inmates to work helping to build lockups. And build more efficiently, possibly creating “mega-prisons.” Erect 15 new fire/work camps to reduce the need for 2,000 prison beds. Place severely ill, incapacitated inmates in nursing homes.

Cost reform is Lockyer’s price for allowing Wilson to place a $2.65-billion prison construction bond issue on the November ballot.

*

Lockyer on Wednesday also plunged into the debate over schools, introducing a $113-million “educational guarantee” package for the worst students in the worst schools. He’d pour money into improving these “focus schools” and also the surrounding neighborhoods. Social services would be increased and community involvement encouraged. If students didn’t do better within a year, they could transfer to another public school.

Republicans may think this smacks of a holdover program from the “Great Society.” No matter, it’s Lockyer’s counter to a private voucher bill being pushed by Wilson and Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove). And there’ll be no deal-making for any private vouchers, the senator insists.

“I cannot imagine any circumstances in which I would be an advocate for private vouchers,” he told me. Something less than an advocate? “I can not imagine even assenting. Taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to subsidize private schools.”

Most voters agree, even in some GOP-held legislative districts, according to a recent poll conducted for the California Teachers Assn.

Pollsters and consultants also are finding that with the recession over and the crime rate declining, education has moved to the front of voter concerns. It’s not yet known whether this issue is powerful enough to move voters, but it’s definitely moving politicians.