Legislators End Session With Spending Spree

Lawmakers spent more than $1 billion in an end-of-session spree, approving bills that would fund everything from new construction at prisons to more remedial programs for struggling students and, in a midnight finale, the purchase of a new redwood park.

The largest single measure came when the Assembly early Tuesday agreed to $245 million for the state’s share to buy Headwaters Forest, 7,500 acres of ancient redwoods in Humboldt County. The federal government will pay an additional $250 million.

The bill won final approval Tuesday morning after intense lobbying. Once Gov. Pete Wilson signs the legislation, as he has promised, the state and federal government will have bought the last major piece of privately owned virgin redwood land.

Wilson called the Headwaters deal “a very important thing.”

He called his eighth and final legislative session as governor “remarkably productive,” citing overhauls to the education system and a $1.4-billion tax cut approved earlier, along with the two major projects approved on the final day of the session--$235 million for a water project in Southern California and $245 million for the redwoods.

Wilson can veto any of the spending measures. But most were part of agreements struck in the last days of the legislative session.

The last-minute spending bills will be paid for by the state’s budget reserve. That reserve was about $2 billion at this time last week--largely because Wilson, with some flourish, had blue-penciled $1.5 billion from the state budget. With the new spending proposals, however, the emergency reserve will end up at about $1 billion.

“They were spending money they didn’t even know they had and didn’t bother to add up,” said Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge). “They blew through a billion dollars just in the last few hours of the session.”

McClintock’s opposition notwithstanding, most legislators, Republican and Democrat, agreed to the spending, knowing that a vote for another lawmaker’s deal meant a vote for theirs.

Southern and Northern California lawmakers linked support of the water project and Headwaters in an extraordinary example of logrolling.

Maxxam Corp., the owner, hailed the deal, which will leave the company with as much as $480 million in cash. In the final hours of the legislative session, the firm lobbied hard for its approval.

“The decision by the Legislature removes the last major barrier to the acquisition of the Headwaters,” said U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

The Headwaters legislation places restrictions on logging aimed at protecting more than 200,000 acres, much of it already logged, in the vicinity of Headwaters.

The state’s cost originally had been pegged at $130 million, with the federal government paying $250 million for the 7,500-acre Headwaters Forest.

But Wilson and the lawmakers sweetened the offer to Maxxam Corp. last week with an offer to buy a smaller stand of redwoods for up to $80 million, then sweetened it again by agreeing to spend $20 million more to help buy a third redwood parcel.

Finally, lawmakers who represent the area pushed for an additional $15 million to provide economic assistance to Humboldt County, where Maxxam’s timber subsidiary, Pacific Lumber, is the largest private employer.

The $15 million was inserted late in the bargaining and came about so quickly that the first time North Coast lobbyists realized it was there was when they read the bill.

The Headwaters bill passed the Senate with relative ease. In the Assembly, the measure stalled for more than four hours before being approved on a 54-12 vote, the minimum needed to pass the measure in the 80-seat house.

During that time, lobbyists for Maxxam set up temporary shop in the office of Assemblyman Lou Papan (D-Millbrae), calling in lawmakers to make their pitches for support.

Aides to Wilson also were working on the measure, calling Assembly members away from their desks to make private appeals. Also working on the bill was Sen. Steve Peace (D-El Cajon). Peace had engineered passage of the $235-million deal to pay for the lining of the All-American Canal with concrete. The water conservation project is designed to benefit Southern California.

“I felt morally committed,” Peace said. “[San Diego] did very well. It took a lot of votes from the north” to get the All-American Canal approved.

Although the deals over water and redwoods were the big-ticket items, several others come with hefty price tags. Among them:

* $180 million to add high-security cells at prisons, plus more programs for parolees and mentally ill offenders.

The prison package includes its share of pork. As part of it, the state Department of Corrections was directed to study the possibility of leasing land for use as a golf course in Chino. The land is near a driving range named for retiring Sen. Ruben Ayala (D-Chino).

* Various bills that could provide counties with $160 million to help run trial courts.

* Although Wilson and unions representing most state employees failed to reach agreement on a new pay package, the administration did agree to grant the union representing prison guards a 12% pay hike, amounting to $149 million.

* $125 million for various juvenile justice projects, including new detention centers.

* $105 million for remedial summer school and after-school programs for students who are falling behind. The measure would make it somewhat easier to hold students back a grade if they continue to lag.

* $50 million for the state’s 250 lowest-performing schools. Wilson has threatened to veto this measure because schools would have a choice about whether to join the program. Wilson wants a mandatory program.

* $9.1 million to reimburse businesses and residents of the Portola area for damages when the state poisoned Lake Davis in October.

Among the lesser spending proposals in the final days and hours of the session, the Legislature approved:

* A package of $11 million in local public works projects, which Wilson has vetoed once. The deal includes $5 million to restore the Leland Stanford Mansion in Sacramento, which Wilson wants, plus various pork projects championed by influential lawmakers.

* A separate $21-million package of pork projects--dubbed by some legislators as the parallel pork bill. Wilson had not agreed to many of these measures.

Times staff writer Max Vanzi contributed to this story.

* LOBBYISTS UNITED: Sacramento lobbyists unite to overcome opposition to a Holocaust insurance bill. A3