Hot Capitol, Lazy Pace

Two ritual signs in Sacramento this week point to movement toward resolution of the annual state budget deadlock: The Big Five is meeting and the temperature finally has gone over 100 degrees. The bad news is that the Big Five--Gov. Pete Wilson and the Democratic and GOP leaders of the Legislature--acts as if it has all the time in the world to pass a budget. It nibbles around the edges rather than attacking the core problem.

In recent years, the routine has been that legislative budget writers, who should be completing the job themselves before July 1, leave the most difficult issues to the Big Five. The Sacramento weather is a more uncertain factor. The rule of thumb is that the Big Five won’t get down to real work until the temperature hits 100 three days in a row. Alas, air conditioning takes some of the sting out of that incentive.

After a 90-minute Big Five meeting late Wednesday, participants said the talks were cordial but not very productive. Much of the time was spent sorting out which issues can be handled by aides and which can be negotiated only by the Big Five itself.

What Wilson and the other big shots ought to do is decide how much of the state’s $4.4-billion surplus must be spent on tax cuts and education. Those issues are the heart of the deadlock between the governor and the Democrats, who control both houses of the Legislature. Wilson insists on an unrealistic $3.6-billion reduction in the vehicle license fee, the annual state car tax. Democrats have countered with a more reasonable $1-billion alternative.

This is pure macho politics. Wilson wants to be able to seek the GOP nomination for the presidency in 2000 as a tax cutter, not as one who raised taxes by $7 billion during the recession in the early 1990s.

He says the personal tax burden should be reduced to pre-recession levels. But Wilson never talks about making up the billions that were cut from worthy state programs and never restored.

Democrats want to use $1 billion of the surplus for additional spending on public schools. They view that as a political trump card in this fall’s elections, although they have not documented just how all that money would be used productively.

The first priority for any of the Big Five should be the fiscal integrity of California. The state should set aside a healthy budget reserve against future economic decline and to cope with the hard certainty of eventual natural disasters. Fiscal experts suggest an emergency reserve of about $1.5 billion.

California now is 17 days into the new fiscal year without a budget, and the administration says it might not be able to make July 30 welfare payments. If the Big Five can’t agree quickly on the size of a tax cut, it should put sufficient money from the surplus into a temporary tax and education fund and pass the budget so that government can resume functioning the way it should. Responsibility must come before politics.