Assembly OKs Budget After GOP Delay

After a largely futile 24-hour delay, the state Assembly gave final legislative approval Wednesday evening to the $81.7-billion budget that cuts taxes by $500 million and significantly boosts money for schools and the environment.

Assembly Republicans had bottled up the budget Tuesday night and most of Wednesday but finally gave up and voted for it after Gov. Gray Davis agreed to a modest $7-million research and development tax credit for high-tech companies and a second, smaller tax cut for the trucking industry.

Twenty-one Republicans approved the spending plan as did all 47 Assembly Democrats and the one Green Party member. Ten Republicans voted no and one did not vote, giving the budget far more than the required two-thirds majority.

Also on Wednesday, Senate Democrats and Republicans approved by a 28-6 margin $311 million in long-term debt to finance construction of a maximum security prison at Delano, something Assembly Republicans had demanded, as did the governor.

The $311-million bond, expected to win Assembly approval, would pay for California’s 34th prison, more than any other state and more than the federal government operates. The Delano prison will house 4,500 prisoners, and will be the 22nd prison built since California embarked on its prison building spree in the middle 1980s.

Assembly Republicans had sought bigger changes in the spending plan for the 1999-2000 fiscal year, but Davis, the state Senate and Assembly Democrats had refused to offer more than minor tweaks. After a late-night session Tuesday, Republicans in the lower house remained huddled in a private room off the Assembly floor for five hours Wednesday afternoon before finally emerging shortly before 5 p.m.

“Do I want more? Sure,” said Assemblyman Jim Cunneen (R-San Jose). But he cited the high-tech tax cut as a reason for his decision to vote for the package. Others lauded increased school spending, aid to local government and the prison.

Saying he was proud of the budget, Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) declared: “It says that education and schools and children are our No. 1 priority. . . . It says that our natural resources are the one thing we can pass on.”

The spending plan, approved easily by the Senate on Tuesday, had stalled 48-31 Tuesday night in the 80-member Assembly, six votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed to give final approval.

But in trying to win last-minute changes in the budget, the Assembly Republicans were hampered by the fact that a dozen of the Senate’s 15 Republicans already had voted for it, leaving the Assembly GOP isolated.

They were further weakened because they never put forward a detailed list of what they wanted, beyond a desire for big tax cuts that Democrats would not approve. By contrast, Senate GOP leader Ross Johnson of Irvine and his lead budget negotiator, Sen. Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga, had taken a leading role in molding the budget. They insisted on a tax cut of $600 million, more aid for local government and transportation, and reduction in fees at state colleges and universities.

The tax cut, a legacy of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, will come in the form of a 10% reduction in the fee motorists pay to register their cars, resulting in a $500 million savings to vehicle owners next year. The reduction was scheduled to take effect in 2001, but now will occur a year earlier.

The swift prison vote came 24 hours after Davis and Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) agreed to the prison deal. Several Democrats, led by Sen. Richard Polanco of Los Angeles, opposed the prison, calling for more alternatives to incarceration and more efforts to rehabilitate prisoners.

However, Burton pointed out that lawmakers--including some Democratic foes of the prison construction--supported tough-on-crime measures that have helped boost the state prison population to more than 161,000, up from 23,500 in 1980.

“Where do you think those people are going to go?” Burton said.

Lawmakers used a good chunk of the $4.5-billion surplus on the environment, giving $366 million to parks, coastal conservancy and wildlife conservation, a boost of almost 60% from the $231 million Davis had proposed.

In a project pushed by Villaraigosa and Brulte, the state will double to $50 million its program to reduce cancer-causing diesel exhaust by helping truckers and others pay for cleaner engines.

“It’s a significant start,” said Sierra Club lobbyist John White.

Davis lauded the vote two weeks before the July 1 start of the new fiscal year as a historic achievement that gives him “ample opportunity to honor my pledge to sign the first on-time budget since 1993.”