Legislature Faces a Scramble in Session’s Final 3 Weeks

More than 800 bills await action as the California Legislature begins the final three weeks of its 1997 session today. Add to that the need to deal with Gov. Pete Wilson’s scores of budget-item vetoes and the workload appears staggering. It is.

The 120 legislators face a grueling schedule as they seek to pass bills by the midnight Sept. 12 deadline. The biggest issues of this session have been resolved. The Legislature has passed a balanced $69.4-billion state budget that provides a significant increase in funds for public schools and has achieved landmark reform of the state welfare system.

What’s left? Plenty. What absolutely must be done? Not a lot. Unlike the tumultuous end of the 1996 election-year session, there are few, if any, measures of magnitude that merit pushing the session into overtime. This is the first year of a two-year legislative session. Bills that fail to pass do not die automatically but rather carry over into 1998.

The first task is to strike a compromise with Wilson on his demand for a statewide student achievement test to be conducted next year. Fortunately, a deal may be in the works. The stalemate over the test prompted Wilson to veto more than $200 million in critical spending items that he now says will be reconsidered once the test is approved. The Legislature would have to pass a score or more of bills to restore those items.

All this effort could have been avoided if Wilson had not been so stubbornly insistent on details of the testing plan and used his veto as a blackjack to get his way.

Democratic leaders said they will focus on legislation on bilingual education, children’s health and health insurance, the financing of sorely needed new school facilities and easing of the financial burden imposed on less-affluent motorists by Smog Check II. Democrats also will push a list of union-supported measures to help working Californians.

Republicans and business leaders have mounted a campaign assaulting these bills as “job killers.” A key one would overturn a state agency ruling that eliminated the mandatory payment of overtime for time worked beyond eight hours in any one day. If it passes, a veto is likely.

Environmental groups are trying to salvage a modest program of needed additional protection for the coast and coastal waters. The governor’s office should join legislators in this effort.

Managing the final weeks of the session will be a major test of the Democratic leadership. For his part, Wilson should work more amicably, and productively, with opposition lawmakers. It will take discipline, some tough decision-making and--if it’s not too much to ask--a measure of goodwill on both sides of the political aisle.