Schwarzenegger’s After-School Plan Needs More Study

In 2002, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger created a ballot initiative for after-school programs that he used as a springboard to the governor’s office the next year. Now, that measure is about to become a drain on the state treasury -- and on schools.

There’s mounting pressure on the governor to delay his after-school program expansion -- or dump it entirely. Ultimately, if Schwarzenegger allowed it, that question would be put to California voters, who approved Proposition 49 by a 57% majority.

Critics say state government can’t afford the $426-million cost. Sacramento still is writing checks in red ink. The governor has proposed spending $6.4 billion more than the state takes in during the fiscal year starting July 1, when he intends to greatly expand after-school programs.

Moreover, schools have more pressing priorities just trying to meet regular classroom needs.

“First things first,” says Sen. Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch), a former schoolteacher who’s sponsoring legislation that would place a measure on the June ballot to delay the program.

“Let’s get our financial house in order. We’ve mandated programs and pulled the rug out from under schools. They need discretionary money. There’s a whole host of things not being funded: Class-size reduction. Preparing students for the exit exam. Attracting and maintaining math and science teachers.

“When voters approved this, they didn’t know the state would be in a world of hurt.”

Blame ballot-box budgeting, the bane of representative government. The more the public strips away the power of the governor and the legislature to manage tax dollars, the weaker the elected officials become -- and the less that gets done in Sacramento.

Ballot-box budgeting is running amok. It usually involves a noble cause with an ignoble means: raiding the treasury or gobbling up a tax source at the expense of other public needs, such as healthcare, law enforcement or classroom instruction.

Hollywood producer Rob Reiner’s Proposition 10 was a prime example. It raised the cigarette tax by 50 cents a pack to pay for early childhood development programs. Voters narrowly passed the initiative, by 1 percentage point, in 1998. Afterward, there was little public accountability.

Recently it was disclosed that the Reiner-headed commission created by Prop. 10 had spent $23 million of public money for TV ads to promote Reiner’s latest political cause: “Preschool for All.” The ads ran while Reiner was launching a new ballot initiative that would tax the rich to fund preschool for 4-year-olds.

The blatant misuse of Prop. 10 money has prompted some previous supporters of Reiner’s preschool initiative -- Proposition 82 on the June ballot -- to withdraw their endorsements.

One is Torlakson, who intends to run for state superintendent of public instruction in 2010.

“Preschool is a great idea,” he says, “but is this the right vehicle? Lots of money would go to parts of California where children already are in preschool. This would help parents already paying out of their own pocket and can afford it. Children in the Crenshaw area have less opportunity for preschool. Any program should be more targeted.”

Of course, Reiner isn’t a dunce. He understood that free “preschool for all” would appeal to middle-and-upper income families, who vote in greater numbers than poor people.

For now, Torlakson describes himself as neutral on Prop. 82.

Not Senate Leader Don Perata (D-Oakland), who last week switched from a supporter to an opponent. He also wants to delay implementation of Schwarzenegger’s after-school expansion.

“It takes money away from the classroom,” Perata says. “It’s like Reiner’s preschool initiative: In principle, it’s a good idea. But it compounds a [fiscal] problem.”

Reiner at least would raise taxes to fund his program, unlike Schwarzenegger. But Democrats long have eyed the same revenue pot -- a tax on upper incomes -- to finance other causes, like honestly balancing the budget.

Republicans, while pummeling Reiner, are lying low on Schwarzenegger.

“We want to support our governor,” says Senate GOP leader Dick Ackerman of Irvine. “And people have already voted for Prop. 49.”

The biggest critic of Schwarzenegger’s program is not a Democrat, but nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill, known affectionately as “the budget nun.”

Hill doesn’t like the program’s continual “autopilot” spending while the state faces a multibillion-dollar budget gap. “The additional spending on after-school programs is a lower budget priority than protecting ... base education programs,” she writes in her annual budget analysis. “And existing state and federal after-school funds are going unused.”

She recommends repealing Prop. 49, but realizes this is virtually impossible. So she suggests either a delay or a phase-in over several years.

Schwarzenegger is dead set against a delay.

Says Bonnie Reiss, Schwarzenegger’s senior advisor and former executive director of his pre-gubernatorial after-school programs: “It would be a mistake to delay it. This amount of money, relative to the [$125.6-billion] budget is so small.... Now more than ever the extra $426 million is critical to helping schools keep their doors open” [after hours].

Torlakson needs a two-thirds majority vote in each house by Friday -- and then the governor’s signature -- to place a delay measure on the June ballot. That seems unlikely. But a phase-in proposition for the November ballot is a possibility.

The truth is, many schools don’t have the matching money to qualify for the Schwarzenegger grants anyway. So the program may be phased in naturally on its own.

Schwarzenegger loves this program. It’s his pet. But he should be asking himself whether “living within our means” was merely a one-year political slogan, or a guiding principle to govern by.

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday.