A Good Year for Schools

California legislators left Sacramento early Tuesday morning after writing a significant record of achievement in 1998, greatly enabled by a $4.4-billion state surplus. There is some question whether lawmakers should have voted to spend so much of the revenue bonanza when the stock market was in chaos and economic warning signs were flashing nearly everywhere. Even so, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and Democratic leaders in the Legislature were correct to push a broad education agenda this year, highlighted by a $9.2-billion bond issue placed on the November ballot to build and repair facilities from kindergarten through graduate school.

The Legislature also enacted other public school reforms, some of them long championed by Wilson. They include lengthening the school year to 180 days, allocation of $250 million for new textbooks and banning the automatic advancement of poor-performing pupils from one grade to the next. Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) called it “the year of education,” and he deserves much of the credit for finally shepherding the bond measure through the Legislature.

Villaraigosa and Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) were effective in other matters as well. In the final hours of the session, they managed to achieve two major goals, shared with Wilson, that had been fraught with conflict and controversy. Those are approval of $235 million to underwrite a significant farm-to-city water transfer agreement in Southern California and $245 million for the purchase of endangered old-growth redwood forests in the north.

There are still some loose ends. Wilson succeeded in blocking, for the third consecutive year, pay raises for the majority of state workers because of an impasse over Civil Service rules. And no agreement could be reached on overall reform of health maintenance organizations. Those items definitely should be on the 1999 agenda.

Both Villaraigosa and Burton were new to leadership, but in the end they held their own with the governor. Their major achievement in fashioning a $76-billion budget was to blunt Wilson’s initial demands for a $3.6-billion tax cut that would have used up much of the budget surplus. Eventually, the Legislature approved a more moderate mix including $1.4 billion in tax reductions. Further cuts were approved for future years, but they are contingent on even rosier economic conditions than the state has enjoyed in the past several years. Even better than a tax cut would have been more spending on long-term investments such as school facilities, transportation and natural resources.

While the basic California economy seems strong, there are obvious concerns. It would not take a dramatic downturn to plunge the state budget back into red ink again just as a new governor takes office, as happened when Wilson became governor in 1991. Wilson now leaves because of term limits. But if Democrats remain in the majority in the Legislature, Burton and Villaraigosa presumably will be back as leaders, and they will need to be prepared to cope quickly if such an eventuality arises.