Governor Is Paying the Price for Breaking His Promise to Schools

When it’s all dissected and analyzed, the postmortem will show that the biggest mistake Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made was breaking his promise to schools.

That single act -- reneging on his pledge to give schools their regular share of any growth in tax revenue -- turned respectful allies into fierce enemies.

Since then, these friends-turned-foes have attacked the governor relentlessly in TV ads and plunged his poll numbers into once-unimaginable depths.

Other Schwarzenegger mistakes have not been so devastating.

Indeed, one mistake was a crowd-pleaser: cutting the car tax and not replacing the $4 billion in lost revenue with another tax. Had the new governor raised taxes temporarily when he was popular and muscular, he wouldn’t still be mucking around in a budget hole.

If Schwarzenegger’s major ballot propositions are rejected Nov. 8, then his forcing the pricey special election will prove to have been a monumental mistake. But any ballot box beating will have had its roots in the broken promise to schools.

He has made verbal mistakes by ridiculing people with macho lingo unbefitting a governor. But people tend to forgive somebody for his words if he acts properly.

In politics, going back on your word is a cardinal sin. Trust is a politician’s stock in trade. Commitments are expected to be honored.

The upshot of Schwarzenegger’s not honoring his commitment to the school lobby -- and the teachers union’s consequent declaration of war -- can be seen in a poll released last week by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. Only 38% of likely voters approve of the governor’s job performance, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Education ranks a close second to the economy as “the most important issue” facing California, the poll showed. Schools far outweigh the budget deficit and taxes as current concerns.

But in January, when Schwarzenegger began promoting his spending “reform,” the deficit and taxes ranked near the top of public priorities. Their decline in perceived importance is an illustration of the governor’s failure this year to sell his agenda.

Only 21% of voters who rank education as the No. 1 issue approve of how Schwarzenegger is handling his job. A mere 15% support Prop. 76, his spending cap proposal that would reduce the school funding guarantee. And 57% describe his governorship as “worse than expected.”

PPIC pollster Mark Baldassare says Schwarzenegger’s broken promise “made him a lot more vulnerable and gave his opponents something to run with.”

Here’s how it all unfolded:

After taking office two years ago, Schwarzenegger was desperate for money to balance the budget without raising taxes. He negotiated a deal with the “education coalition,” including the California Teachers Assn., school boards and the PTA. They agreed to surrender $2 billion that schools were owed under the Prop. 98 guarantee, if the money later was repaid and recalculated into the minimum funding base.

But this was the crucial part: The governor also promised that if tax revenues rose, schools would get their normal share of the increase. They’d give up $2 billion, but no more.

“Trust me,” Schwarzenegger said at the deal’s announcement.

He won wide praise as a refreshing, bipartisan deal-maker who could reach out to improbable allies.

But when revenues rose, the governor reneged.

Advisors strongly urged him to keep his promise to schools, Schwarzenegger has told people privately. But when he checked into how deeply he’d then have to cut health programs for children, the poor and disabled, he didn’t have the stomach. And he wouldn’t consider a tax increase.

The governor’s goof wasn’t just breaking his word. It was how he did it.

The smart move would have been to again ask the education folks for their help. Quietly renegotiate.

“The [teachers union] is the best problem-solving institution I know,” then-CTA lobbyist John Hein told me after he’d helped negotiate the school deal. “But if you don’t ask us upfront, we can be your worst nightmare.”

Schwarzenegger did call a meeting with CTA officials last December as he was finalizing his new budget proposal, recalls Barbara Kerr, the union’s president. “He said, ‘I’m having difficulties.’ We said, ‘A promise is a promise.’ The meeting broke up without a conclusion.”

The next time the CTA heard from the governor was when he delivered his State of the State address in January. It then learned he was reneging.

Not only that, but the governor launched an attack on public employees’ pensions and tried to have teachers paid strictly on “merit.” Those flawed proposals tanked. But he’s still attempting to more than double the teachers’ probationary period (Prop. 74) and reduce the school-funding guarantee.

He also began calling his former negotiating partners “union bosses.”

In the ballot battle, there have been distortions on both sides. Unions have left the impression that Schwarzenegger actually cut school funding. In reality, he increased it by $3 billion. But that’s also a distortion. All but $700 million of that increase was required by Prop. 98. And if the governor had kept his word, schools would have received an additional $3.1 billion.

Schwarzenegger spokesman Todd Harris says Prop. 76’s biggest hurdle has been “this lie” that the governor cut school money. “The public likes people who fund education. It doesn’t like people who cut education.”

It also likes politicians who keep their word. But Schwarzenegger couldn’t keep two promises simultaneously: one on school funding and the other to voters not to raise taxes.

The governor’s original mistake: over-promising.

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George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.