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War Games in Sacramento

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It’s nuke-’em time in Sacramento. Or perhaps a more apt description of the state budget stalemate in recent days might be a meltdown of responsible political leadership.

Gov. Pete Wilson sought to end the budget game with a “neutron bomb”: his unilateral decision to pay off the state’s $1.36-billion debt to the state pension system this year rather than spread it out over 10 years.

This was, essentially, political petulance in response to the Democrats’ predictable rejection of Wilson’s earlier preemptory strike, a 13th-hour decision to demand a $1-billion state personal income tax cut, which was followed by the Democrats’ own demand that the state pick up food stamp payments for legal immigrants, or else. It was, of course, rejected by Wilson. Now, if the endgame plays out as expected, most or all of the new programs hammered out in the past seven months will be vaporized.

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Under the Wilson edict, virtually all of this year’s state revenue bonanza goes to pay off the debt rather than to finance a host of projects. A doomsday list from the governor’s office included Wilson’s own coastal protection initiative and a plan to speed up death row appeals. The single significant exception is the public school system, whose financing is safeguarded by the state Constitution.

The state is under court order to pay the pension debt, which is money borrowed during the recession of the early 1990s to help offset a massive state budget deficit. But there was no moral imperative to pay it all at once.

In fact, cities and counties have a far higher moral claim on some of the new money. Also during the recession, the state usurped more than $3 billion in local property tax revenues from struggling local governments to pay state bills. The Legislature’s 1997-98 budget proposed returning $250 million to local government this year--a small but important step. That pledge is dissolved by Wilson’s nuke.

The people of California deserve better than macho war games during budget negotiations. And if they don’t get better, they might threaten an Armageddon of their own at the polls next election.

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