Despite Deficit, Lawmakers Keep Trying to Spend Money : Government: The state is facing a $12.6-billion budget gap. But more than 100 bills costing $250,000 or more each have reached the Legislature’s fiscal committees.

SACRAMENTO —  One assemblyman wants $100,000 in tax money to set up a central state office to promote self-esteem.

The Assembly Speaker is asking for $2 million for a museum and aquarium in his home district.

A senator asked for $3.5 million to help pay for a California exhibit at the 1992 World Exposition in Spain.

In a time of budget crisis, when the state faces a $12.6-billion deficit, these and other elected officials are proposing new ways to spend taxpayers’ dollars.

There are scores of such spending bills before the Legislature--at a time when lawmakers are desperately looking for cash to fill in the revenue shortfall.

Many of the proposals are old-fashioned “pork barrel” measures to pay for improvements that benefit the folks back in the district. Others finance pet projects, including some that were vetoed by the previous governor.

Other bills tackle long-standing problems, some at a cost of millions of dollars. Gov. Pete Wilson wants $20 million to launch “Healthy Start,” a program to take care of children’s health care and social service needs through their local schools. Another bill, opposed by the Wilson Administration, would add $300 million in aid for the elderly, blind and disabled.

All of these proposals face an uncertain future because of the state’s daunting budget gap. The more expensive the proposal, the more likely it will run into trouble, say legislators who head the watchdog committees that must review all spending bills.

The bleak outlook has not curtailed the politicians, proving once again that hope springs eternal--at least in the Capitol. Well over 100 measures costing $250,000 or more each have reached the legislative fiscal committees.

The Assembly Ways and Means Committee chairman, John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), said he is warning his fellow lawmakers: “You’ve got to put a halt to everything in order to make up for the last decade of stupidity and inattention and get the state on track with horrible cuts and unhappy tax increases. Until that’s done, everything is going to have to wait.”

“Even the governor’s own programs are not a shoo-in,” said Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee. Presley is carrying Wilson’s Healthy Start bill and vows a fight, contending that the measure will save money by heading off problems before they occur.

This year, though, programs that otherwise would have passed easily are being questioned, he added, “not so much because they are not good programs, but is this the year to start new ones?”

The most expensive programs will for the most part be held by the spending review committees until the new state budget is settled and the deficit resolved. But even those costing less than $150,000 could be in for rough going.

Vasconcellos is the author of two bills that would encourage development of programs to promote self-esteem. The legislation is part of the liberal politician’s efforts to implement findings of a state self-esteem task force, which caused a considerable stir and was lampooned in the comic strip “Doonesbury,” but has the strong support of Gov. Wilson.

Vasconcellos argues that his own bills--one that would spend $100,000 to set up a centralized clearinghouse for local self-esteem programs--are a good investment in the future.

“The more we discover ways to establish self-esteem, the more it leads to saving money later on,” he argued, by keeping youngsters in school and out of prison. But he acknowledged that even his bills will have difficulty surviving this year’s budgetary crisis. “All it has is a prayer,” he said.

Presley and Vasconcellos say legislators have taken the fiscal crisis into account this year and that there appear to be fewer spending measures than in the past.

Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) said he has seen no evidence that legislators have curtailed their appetite for spending.

“As long as there is a money tree that is watered by the taxpayers’ earnings, the spending spree will continue,” said the conservative lawmaker, who opposes the tax increases that have been proposed by Wilson and legislative leaders to balance the budget.

The money bills range from bread-and-butter measures that take care of a problem in a legislator’s district to broad-based attacks on serious social problems.

One measure, by Assemblymen Pete Chacon (D-San Diego) and Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), would allow each member of the State Board of Equalization to award two $5,000 college scholarships yearly to needy, minority students. Because of concerns that the awards could become political plums, the authors have decided to hold up the bill until next year, said a spokesman for Chacon.

Another bill would grant members of the Public Employees’ Retirement System board annual salaries of up to $113,000 a year, a huge increase over their current $100-a-meeting allowance. The measure, by Assemblyman Dave Elder (D-San Pedro), also would prevent board members from accepting gifts from contractors for the $62-billion system or meeting privately with prospective contractors.

Sen. William A. Craven (R-Oceanside) wants $225,000 to set up a state trade office in Vienna to promote sales of California goods in Eastern Europe.

Similarly, Sen. Henry J. Mello (D-Watsonville) asked for $3.5 million to pay half the cost of a state pavilion at the 1992 World Exposition in Spain; the other half would have been picked up by private companies. Unable to win such a sizable expenditure, Mello agreed to trim it to $150,000.

Other bills are directed toward projects in legislators’ home districts.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) is asking for $2 million to help renovate exhibits at the California Academy of Sciences museum and aquarium in Golden Gate Park. A spokesman for Brown said this is one of a series of bills the Speaker has carried to help the academy in recent years.

The money would come from one of several special state funds that are frequently tapped for construction projects. But in a year of fiscal crisis, the Administration and legislative leaders are looking covetously at any special fund money that can be used to balance the state general fund budget.

Assemblywoman Carol Bentley (R-El Cajon) wants $8.8 million from one of those special funds to purchase land and operate a park for off-highway vehicles in San Diego County.

For planning a similar park in Los Angeles County, Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) is asking for $175,000.

Katz argues that even if it were legal to use the off-highway vehicle money to deal with the state’s budget woes, it would be wrong. The fees paid by off-highway vehicle owners were passed with the understanding that they would be used to develop and operate parks for those vehicles. “If the money was used in health care, (the vehicle owners) would feel like they were ripped off.”

The search for ways to shift revenue and cut spending has not stopped several legislators from introducing measures that tackle significant statewide problems.

Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin (D-Union City) wants to be able to give a grant of $10,000 to any school without a library and $7,500 to each school with an antiquated book collection. Twenty percent of the state’s schools have no libraries, she said, adding that similar bills were approved by the Legislature but vetoed by Gov. Wilson’s predecessor, George Deukmejian.

“Today when kids go to their school libraries they’re being told that the smallest particle of matter is the atom,” she said. “They’re reading that men may someday walk on the moon.”

Assemblyman Rusty Areias (D-Los Banos) wants to change the law to permit the state to make foster care payments to relatives of displaced children. Under current law, the payments are only made for youngsters who move in with non-relatives--mostly strangers. Estimates of the cost of the program range from $7 million to $200 million a year. While the exact amount is debatable, a spokeswoman for Areias agrees that the measure has little chance of success this year.

San Francisco Assemblyman John Burton refuses to describe his measure for increasing payments to the state’s elderly, blind and disabled as a spending increase, because it restores cuts that were made a year ago as part of a budget compromise.

“It doesn’t increase spending,” the Democratic lawmaker said. “It stops the state from stealing money from the elderly, blind and disabled. . . . The whole purpose of these programs is to keep them from going over the edge.” Burton concedes that his bill in its present form cannot muster the support it needs to get out of the Assembly.

Vasconcellos and Presley agree that bills that call for improving benefits to public employees are particularly likely to fail this year. Nevertheless, a number of bills to increase pension payments or improve benefits for retirees have been introduced.

Even a relatively minor bill, by Elder, calling for a study of benefits received by non-teaching school district employees, drew a sharp rebuke from Vasconcellos: “We’re $13 billion broke and anything that leads to additional benefits for employees at this time is stupid.”

For a spending bill to survive this year, Vasconcellos said, “Someone’s life has to be at stake or it has to be obviously smart in terms of investment or so compelling in need that we have to try to find a way.”