Legislators Are Expected to OK Budget Accord

With a spending plan that includes a hefty tax cut, a major boost for schools and pork spread from one end of the state to the other, legislative leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers say there’s little chance of a knockdown fight over this year’s budget.

But just to make sure that the budget receives the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate and Assembly, Gov. Pete Wilson on Thursday summoned Assembly Republicans to his conference room, where he explained to them the virtues of his eighth and final budget.

The point of the gathering?

“To break arms,” one Assembly Republican said. “There was discussion about the power of blue pencils and things like that. You lose your pork [by voting against the budget].

“It’s a very delicate environment to be lined up in chairs and to have the governor speaking to you from a podium--the commander in chief. That allows him to dominate the meeting.”

In a final step toward putting the budget to a vote as early as Monday, a joint Senate and Assembly budget conference committee worked into the night Thursday to approve components of the budget accord announced by Wilson and legislative leaders Wednesday.

Most lawmakers say they will vote for the budget because of the unprecedented increase in money for public schools, which would total more than $30 billion in the 1998-99 budget. Many others support the $1.4-billion tax cut, including a $1-billion reduction in the tax Californians pay to register cars each year. The additional spending was made possible by a $4.4-billion budget surplus created by the state’s booming economy.

But for some legislators, part of the decision depends on whether the budget includes money for projects in their home districts.

“The budget is made out of brick,” said Assembly Republican Leader Bill Leonard of San Bernardino. “The tax cut, funding for education and [money for pet projects] are the mortar that hold it together.”

The state Senate is expected to approve the spending plan Monday. The 40-member upper house rarely stands in the way of a budget deal struck by leaders. There are, however, pockets of resistance in the more unruly 80-seat Assembly.

Hard-line antiabortion lawmakers said Thursday that they will vote against the $76-billion spending plan because it includes $45 million for abortions for poor women. And anti-tax lawmakers want a tax cut even deeper than the $1.4 billion being offered in Wilson’s budget.

The car tax cut legislation is written so that the reduction could rise to a total of $3.2 billion, but only if the state’s economy remains strong for the next five years.

“I would not want to go home to my constituents and explain why I voted against a [$3.2-billion] tax cut,” Wilson said.

Some Democrats in the Assembly are angry over the lack of an agreement to grant state workers a pay raise, even as Wilson and the leaders agreed to a 7.9% hike in grants to welfare recipients. A few complained that their hometown projects were left on the cutting room floor.

Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza (D-Merced), for one, was banking on $30 million to help create a new University of California campus in Merced.

“I’m really upset,” Cardoza said after being told that $18 million was stripped from the proposal. “San Francisco is ready to fall into the ocean with all the pork it got, and I can’t get accelerated spending when we have a [budget surplus], and my county has the highest unemployment in the state.”

But overall, Assembly Republican and Democratic leaders believe that the budget will attract the 54 votes necessary for approval.

“This is a budget the Legislature will overwhelmingly pass, and it is a budget we can all be proud of,” said Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles). Leaders said they expected about 35 Democrats to vote for the budget.

Assemblyman Bruce Thompson (R-Fallbrook) predicted that 20 to 22 Assembly Republicans would vote for the budget--although Thompson, who is part of the Republican leadership, plans to vote against it because it includes abortion funding, which Wilson has consistently protected during his eight years in office.

“Pete has his feet in stone and we all should know that when Pete has decided on something, that’s it,” Thompson said Thursday. “He just doesn’t change his mind. . . . I’ll wait and see what happens with the next governor.”

The budget conference committee, meanwhile, put the final touches Thursday on the spending plan, now 37 days past the start of the 1998-1999 fiscal year and the constitutional deadline for having a budget in place. Much of that work entailed lining the budget with additional spending for special projects in individual lawmakers’ home districts.