Wilson Signs Budget Into Law

Hoping to burnish his image and attract maximum attention, Gov. Pete Wilson traveled to Columbus Elementary School in Glendale on Monday to sign California’s new $63-billion budget and trumpet new spending aimed at dramatically cutting class sizes in the lower grades.

“We’re investing heavily in schools because a good education means a good future for every Californian,” Wilson said, speaking in the school’s steamy auditorium, surrounded by 40 second- and third-graders holding California state flags.

Wilson appeared at the 1,200-student school to tout the $28-billion education spending plan, which includes $771 million so schools can reduce class size to 20 students in first and second grades--plus either kindergarten or third grade--and $200 million for new classrooms.

Wilson chose Columbus Elementary partly because the event would draw Los Angeles television news coverage and partly because the school is like many in California. Some of its classes have 33 students, and almost three-fourths of the children have limited English proficiency.

The school also has taken steps that Wilson has championed, including having children wear uniforms. Principal Mabel Morse, who along with third-grader Neil Sanchez introduced Wilson to the gathering of parents, teachers, school officials and politicians, lauded the budget as the start of a “renaissance” for California schools.

Wilson signed the budget into law two weeks after the start of the 1996-1997 fiscal year and the state constitutional deadline for having the spending plan in place. The controller’s office said that although the budget was late, only a handful of direct paycheck deposits for Assembly staffers were delayed.

With more Californians working and paying taxes, there was far more money to go around in this year’s budget. It reflects a 9% increase over last year’s spending. Republicans and Democrats, who had grown accustomed to lengthy budget fights, are pleased with this year’s budget, and both sides are taking credit for it.

“This is a very different budget and one we like much better,” Wilson said, appearing at the school with Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

Seeking to gain additional mileage from the new budget, Wilson will travel to the Silicon Valley today to sign separate budget-related legislation implementing a 5% tax cut for corporations and banks. Starting Jan. 1, the tax cut will translate into $230 million in tax savings for businesses.

“I can guarantee there will be job creation as result of this tax cut,” said William Campbell, a former legislator and president of the California Manufacturers Assn.

As he signed the budget, Wilson showed more restraint than in past years in his use of his blue pencil to veto specific spending proposals. Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer described Wilson’s line-item vetoes as “modest and in most cases prudent.”

But the Republican governor did invoke his line-item veto power to delete $82 million in spending, paring out several projects in the districts of Democratic lawmakers. Wilson took a swipe at San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a former Assembly speaker and rival, vetoing $1 million for earthquake work at San Francisco City Hall.

Wilson also deleted $238,000 that had been earmarked for the purchase of property once owned by director Frank Capra. The property near Topanga State Park was to be used to help complete the Backbone Trail in the Santa Monica Mountains.

“There’s not sufficient understanding of what a large near-wilderness area the Santa Monica Mountains are,” said Assemblywoman Sheila J. Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), who had pushed for the money. “It’s easy for someone like Gov. Wilson to fail to appreciate how much we need this.”

With Republicans in control of the Assembly for the first time since 1970, GOP lawmakers took the opportunity to bring home special projects. Wilson obliged, leaving intact, for example, $935,000 to promote flower growing in northern San Diego County, $1.1 million for a boat dock at Castaic Lake, $4 million for a science center in Santa Ana and $325,000 for a park in Santa Ana--all in Republican districts.

Speaker Curt Pringle of Garden Grove said Monday that “for years there have been disproportionate” sums of money going to cities, especially to San Francisco when Brown was speaker.

“This year, we addressed some of that,” said Pringle, who joined Wilson in Glendale.

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Pringle inserted $800,000 into the budget for a sound wall on the San Diego Freeway in Seal Beach. Also for Orange County, there is money to draw up plans for a campground at Bolsa Chica State Park.

Perhaps the most significant change was in education funding. The Legislature and Wilson agreed to an education spending formula that shifted $147 million away from urban schools to suburban and rural schools, which are Republican strongholds and traditionally have received less state money than city schools. GOP lawmakers intend to continue their efforts to move money to suburban and rural school districts next year, if they retain control of the Assembly.

Mark Watts, Pringle’s chief of staff, said that as a result of changes in various formulas, Orange County received an extra $10 million, and perhaps more, than it would have received under past formulas when Democrats controlled both houses of the Legislature.

Although Republican lawmakers generally fared well, Wilson blocked an effort by Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside) to open an environmentally sensitive stretch of Anza-Borrego State Park to off-road vehicles.

Morrow persuaded legislators to insert the budget language after he got a ticket for driving his pickup at 80 mph in the area.

Although Wilson vetoed projects of several Democratic lawmakers, Assembly and Senate Democratic leaders who helped negotiate the budget succeeded in securing funds for their projects.

Assembly Democratic Leader Richard Katz of Sylmar won approval for $500,000 for a rape crisis center at Mission Community Hospital in Panorama City, plus $350,000 for Los Angeles Police Academy magnet schools in the San Fernando Valley.

Additionally, Katz took credit for securing almost $3 million for the Simon Wiesenthal Center to fund Internet access to the center’s exhibits for schools and for the center to carry out what Katz calls sensitivity training for law enforcement officers.

Lockyer, of Hayward, won $200,000 for continued development of a trail system in the Bay Area. Along with Pringle, he also secured $25 million for various gang prevention projects.

One potential loser in the budget was Camarillo State Hospital in Ventura County. The budget earmarks almost $10 million to defray costs associated with the proposed closure of Camarillo, one of five remaining state hospitals for the mentally ill.

The budget includes no further cuts in welfare. But the state’s cost for the main welfare program--Aid to Families With Dependent Children--will fall to $5.1 billion from $5.4 billion, largely because of past cuts and declining welfare rolls. The state has pending from last year requests for the federal government to permit reductions in aid to poor families, as well as in aid to the blind, elderly and disabled.

In addition to the spending on the primary grades, the budget includes $3.8 billion for state colleges and universities, and several campuses will receive funding for construction projects. UC Irvine will receive $21.2 million for construction. UCLA will get $22 million, UC San Diego $19 million, UC Santa Barbara $17 million and UC Riverside $3.3 million.

For the California State University system, the budget includes $30.2 million for a science lab at San Diego State, $25.4 million for an engineering building at Cal State Los Angeles and $27.7 million for a science building at Cal Poly Pomona.

The community college system also was a major winner, with a $3-billion budget, up by $443 million. The budget includes money for 650 new teachers at the 106 colleges.

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State Budget Breakdown

Friendly to business and generous to schools, the new $63-billion state budget signed by Gov. Pete Wilson reflects growing revenues from an improving California economy. The 1996-97 post-recession spending plan, up 9% from last year, spreads the wealth to some, but not all, Californians.

THE HIGHLIGHTS:

* TAXES--Banks and other businesses are granted a 5% tax cut as of Jan 1., which will cost the state $230 million in the first year. No one gets hit with new state taxes. But the renters tax credit of $60 for single people and $120 for couples, scheduled to resume this year after a four-year hiatus, is suspended again, sparing the state $520 million.

* SCHOOLS--Spending for kindergarten through 12th grade rises by $3 billion, to a record $28 billion, boosted in part by an additional $771 million for reducing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade. Also, each of the state’s 7,700 public schools gets a one-time, no-strings grant of at least $25,000. Additionally, more than $1 billion is made available for special reading programs, classroom construction and repair, library needs, bus purchases, school safety and truancy prevention.

* COLLEGES--For the second year running, no increases are assessed on students attending the University of California, California State University or community colleges. The schools will receive a combined $5.2 billion. Fees stay at about $4,000 a year in the UC system, $1,740 at Cal State campuses and about $390 at community colleges.

* WELFARE--A total of $16.6 billion is earmarked for welfare programs. No new cuts were made, but previous reductions originally set to end this year stay in place. Also, state-ordered cuts enacted a year agowent into effect last month and more reductions could occur soon, depending on federal action. Pending congressional approval, a welfare family of three receiving $594 a month could be hit with a decrease of $29 or $56, depending on where they live. Aged, blind and disabled recipients receiving $626 a month will get $15 more, but could lose that and more if Washington approves previous cuts requested by the Wilson administration.

* LOCAL GOVERNMENT--New funds totaling $150 million become available to beef up local law enforcement--$100 million for police, sheriffs and prosecutors, the rest to upgrade juvenile programs.

* PRISONS--The $4-billion total was negotiated downward by $48 million from Wilson’s initial proposal, partly on the basis of a slowing rate of increase in the state’s prison population of 141,000. An additional $25 million will be held in reserve while decisions are reached on building more prisons and whether counties should take over incarceration of nonviolent offenders.

* WOMEN--In a gesture to anti-abortion activists, $10 million was shifted away from the state office of family planning, but supporters of the office said its functions will not be curtailed. For the second straight year, legislators turned down the governor’s proposal to eliminate $32 million used to provide prenatal care to pregnant women who are illegal immigrants.

Compiled by Times staff writer Max Vanzi.