GOP Senators Unveil Plan for Surplus

The state Senate’s Republicans on Monday proposed an ambitious plan to spend a massive chunk of California’s projected surplus on rehabilitating everything from deteriorating highways to neglected state parks.

As an opening step in the annual minuet that eventually produces a state budget, leaders of the minority GOP claimed their package would require no new taxes and would avoid the extra costs of bond issue financing.

Citing projections by the legislative analyst that California’s coffers probably will be awash in more than $3 billion of unanticipated revenue next year, the Republicans said it is time to turn to cash financing of programs rather than raise taxes or pay interest on bond borrowing.

Topping the GOP priority list, whose outcome is subject to negotiation with Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and the Democrats who control the Legislature, was an annual infusion of $760 million for improvement of the state’s congestion-choked highway system.

The extra cash for highways would come from revenue produced by the state sales tax on gasoline, which now flows into the general fund for a variety of programs and services. An additional $60 million from the sales tax on gasoline is earmarked for local transit projects and would not be affected by the GOP proposal.

“Our plan will end the gridlock without raising taxes,” said Ross Johnson of Irvine, leader of the Senate Republicans.

At a briefing for The Times, Johnson and Sen. Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga, the GOP caucus chairman, noted they cooperated last year with Davis and his fellow Democrats to adopt a bipartisan state budget on time and wanted to make their positions clear before the session reconvenes Jan. 3.

“The governor wants a budget on time,” Brulte said. “He knows he has to drive to us, just as we know we have to drive to him. But if we do not clearly signal what our goals are, how the hell can he know what we need?”

The GOP plan also called for spending $391 million next year on improving other public works whose maintenance had been postponed because of the economic recession earlier this decade.

Johnson and Brulte said the funds would be earmarked for improvements of parks, prisons, libraries, water storage projects and state hospitals.

However, the rehabilitation program, which followed on the heels of GOP plans announced earlier to reduce university student fees and funnel additional state aid to local governments, drew criticism from Davis’ office and Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco).

Burton asserted that the Republican plan proposed spending far more money than the anticipated surplus would produce. “Where do they think all the money is going to come from? These guys are spending money like drunken sailors,” Burton said.

Michael Bustamante, press secretary to Davis, said the GOP public works rehabilitation program would be given “due consideration,” but suggested that the three GOP plans programs advanced so far would outspend the surplus.

“I don’t know how you can pay for these proposals and continue to meet California’s needs when it comes to education and paying down all these bills that are coming due, like the smog fee reduction, the increase in Proposition 98 [schools] spending and lawsuits that have been out there for years.”

Burton, who supports rehabilitating highways with bond issues ranging from $4 billion to $16 billion, said he believed Democrats would support certain parts of the GOP program on a “limited basis.”

But he warned that “nothing is going to happen” to advance the GOP highway proposal unless Republicans provide the votes needed for the Assembly to approve his own stalled local transit finance legislation.

That proposal, subject to voter approval statewide, would reduce from a two-thirds to a simple majority the vote needed to increase local taxes for the support of transit systems.