Wilson’s Rhapsody

Gov. Pete Wilson waxed rhapsodic Wednesday evening as he extolled the California comeback from the recession and natural disasters of the early 1990s. “California has become the powerhouse of the Pacific, a beacon of industry and innovation that’s lighting the path to an age of unimaginable incandescence,” the governor told the Legislature in his eighth and final State of the State address.

It was not unexpected of the governor to boast of achievement as he tries to write a legacy that so far has been dominated by recession, as well as by the anti-immigrant and anti-affirmative action movements that he led, to the deep detriment of this state. However, the initiatives for 1998 that he offered Wednesday fell short of eloquent standards.

Some of the proposals Wilson put forth are good ones. His general theme this year is to bolster the state’s physical and human infrastructure, which suffered during the lean budget years. One of his best ideas is a $54-million plan to test infants to detect early impediments to brain development and learning. This is in line with the sort of preventive programs he talked about back in his 1990 campaign, programs that were deferred along with so much else during the recession.

He proposed floating $12 billion in state bonds over the next eight years for public school construction, higher education facilities, water and parks and flood control projects. These too are welcome proposals, and they deal with obvious needs that have been put off for too many years.

On the matter of keeping California economically strong, the governor said that prospective investors in the state want to be assured of a quality lifestyle, in education, transportation and public safety. But here Wilson’s program contains major blanks. There was no proposal to help local government meet those lifestyle demands at the neighborhood level--a major concern of corporate California. There was nothing about revitalizing an aging freeway system and the state’s airports or of creating a transportation system for the 21st century.

And California still has no real plan for channeling growth in the most productive fashion and protecting the state’s best farmlands from sprawling development.

Yes, as the governor said, California is back. But the state still has a long way to go to match Wilson’s golden rhetoric.