Legislators Outline State Budget Goals

A bold 50% cut in university student fees and new help for California’s homeless and mentally ill are among state lawmakers’ top priorities for next year, legislators said Wednesday.

Democratic and Republican leaders of the state Senate rolled out competing election year agendas against the backdrop of a recent forecast of up to $3 billion in surplus revenue by July 1.

For the legislative session that starts Jan. 3, Senate Republicans proposed a wide-ranging education package that would halve the fees that students pay at the University of California and California State University. The costs were jacked up 100% during the recession years earlier this decade.

Under the GOP proposal, the current tuition of $3,429 a year for a UC student would be slashed to $1,715, virtually the same amount it was in 1990. At Cal State, the student fee would fall from $1,428 annually to $714.

“This amounts to significant tax relief for middle-class Californians who have to wrestle with family budgets to give their kids a quality education,” Senate GOP leader Ross Johnson of Irvine said at a news conference.

Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) announced at a separate news conference a Democratic program to devote new attention to the problems of the homeless, foster children and the mentally ill in California.

Burton said he will appoint bipartisan task forces to examine issues involving these disadvantaged people, with a view toward recommending short-term and permanent remedies. Recent articles in The Times reported the deterioration of support systems for the mentally ill in California.

California began closing state hospitals in the 1960s, promising to treat mentally ill and developmentally disabled people in their communities. But the state failed to provide sufficient money for their care. “The money was supposed to follow the patient. And clearly [it] never did,” Burton said. “We also have to figure how to monitor the private institutions where many of these people are, where there have been strong reports of abuse.”

If additional funds are required to carry out reforms that may emerge from legislative investigations, it must involve a bipartisan effort because minority Republicans can block new spending programs, Burton said. He said the task forces will be equally balanced between the two parties.

“I share John’s concern,” Gov. Gray Davis said of Burton’s call for more attention to the care of severely mentally ill people. “I don’t think we’ve treated the less fortunate people in our society very well over the last 20 years.

“There really is a lot of room for improvement, and we ought to do the best we can with the resources the economy provides, and I intend to do that,” Davis said.

Burton said he believes that the Democrat-controlled Legislature will send Davis new gun control bills, although the governor has asked for a moratorium on such measures until the effectiveness of recently enacted laws can be analyzed.

Burton noted that public opinion polls show Californians are overwhelmingly in favor of registering firearms. “You register a car; why not register a gun?” he said.

The governor declined to commit himself to Burton’s or the Republicans’ proposals, saying he won’t get an indication until later this month how much tax money the state expects to take in next year.

Davis said that he is sympathetic to lowering university fees and that he wants to boost spending for public schools. But he noted that the cost of bringing California’s education spending up to the national average would require massive tax hikes.

“It is difficult to make up a gap that was created over more than two decades,” Davis said.

The Republican tuition reduction proposal, which could get favorable attention from reelection-conscious legislators, would relieve university students of paying $412 million a year, starting next fall.

The reduction would be offset by some of the increased revenue forecast last month by Elizabeth Hill, the Legislature’s nonpartisan budget advisor. Davis will announce his own revenue projections next month when he unveils his state budget bill, and will fine-tune them in May before a final budget is enacted.

The reduction in student fees, which would not extend to community colleges, is the cornerstone of the Senate Republicans’ education plan.

The program also called for smaller English classes in 10th and 11th grades, at a cost of $142 million; $179 million more for safety programs in elementary schools; expanded computer training in fourth through eighth grade; and $1.5 billion for enrollment increases, cost-of-living increases and equalization funding between wealthy and poor districts.

Johnson and Sen. Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga, the GOP caucus chairman in the upper house, said their proposed additional spending for public schools would not exceed spending guarantees voted into law in 1988 as Proposition 98.