Lawmakers Get Framework for State Budget

The Legislature’s joint budget-writing committee Monday approved the framework for a 1993-94 spending plan that would cut health and welfare programs, shift money away from local government and extend a temporary sales tax surcharge for three years to erase the state’s deficit from the books.

The plan is scheduled for consideration by the full Assembly today, the Legislature’s rarely met constitutional deadline for passing a budget.

The $50-billion-plus budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 was sent to the Senate and Assembly floors on the strength of votes from the committee’s four Democrats. Two Republicans on the panel abstained.

The resistance from the committee’s two GOP members--and opposition from Gov. Pete Wilson--signal that the budget almost certainly will fail if it is put to a vote in its present form. The Democrats control both houses of the Legislature but need Republican votes to reach the two-thirds majority required to pass the budget.

Assemblyman John Vasconcellos, the Santa Clara Democrat who chaired the conference committee and was the driving force behind the plan that was adopted, scrambled all day Monday to line up Republican support.

“I’m hopeful,” Vasconcellos said. “I’m working hard at it.”

Vasconcellos obtained the endorsement Monday of one Republican--Assemblyman Charles W. Quackenbush of San Jose--and appeared to be making progress with Sen. Tim Leslie of Carnelian Bay, a key player as the Senate Republicans’ lone representative on the conference committee.

If all 48 Democrats in the Assembly vote for the budget, it needs six Republicans votes for passage. In the Senate, at least three Republican votes are needed to enact the budget.

“I think it’s a well-reasoned proposal,” said Quackenbush, a moderate Republican whose district adjoins Vasconcellos’ on the San Francisco Bay Peninsula. “We’re trying to put together a bipartisan coalition to vote for this. It’s time to put the votes together.”

The more conservative Leslie said he wants to see deeper cuts in health and welfare programs and less money for education. But he said he agreed with Vasconcellos on the crucial issue of how to handle a half-cent state sales tax surcharge that is due to expire June 30.

“I think it is a good concept to see it used for deficit reduction,” Leslie said. “That doesn’t work if we are going to have another deficit next year. So we have to deal with the structural problems in government--these caseload-driven, mandated, entitlement programs.”

Leslie and Quackenbush, by moving toward the Vasconcellos plan, are distancing themselves from Wilson, who for months opposed extending the sales tax hike and then agreed, reluctantly, to continue it for six months. Wilson wants to shift the revenue to local government to help counties blunt the impact of the centerpiece of his budget plan, a transfer of $2.6 billion in property tax money from local government to the schools.

The six-month extension of the tax would raise about $700 million for county governments. Wilson has suggested that counties seek voter approval to reimpose the tax as a permanent local levy in November. If every county did so, they would raise another $700 million in the second half of the fiscal year.

But that is a gamble many county governments would rather not take. They prefer the Vasconcellos plan, which guarantees that the local government tax transfer will not exceed $1.2 billion.

Vasconcellos would extend the sales tax surcharge for three years but keep the revenue in the state’s coffers. He would dedicate the money, by law, to repaying the state’s $2.9-billion deficit, which would take two years. He would use the third year of extra sales tax revenue to forgive loans that the state has forced the public schools to accept as part of their budget.

“I want to get out of hock,” Vasconcellos said. “I want to get us out of debt so California’s bond ratings are good on Wall Street. That to me is important to the fiscal integrity of California.”

The conference committee plan contains only the spending authority for the 1993-94 fiscal year. The local government tax transfer and extension of the sales tax will be in other legislation voted on separately.

Wilson, in an interview with The Times on Monday, maintained that the Vasconcellos plan was doomed because it lacks Republican support.

Told that Quackenbush was trying to round up GOP votes for the plan, Wilson replied: “I don’t think he’s going to find many.”

Asked if he would veto the budget if it reached his desk, Wilson declined to answer but predicted he will not have to make that decision.

“It’s never going to come to me, and I don’t think it should,” he said.

Wilson praised Vasconcellos and said the lawmaker had worked hard to produce a plan that has “internal integrity” and is balanced.

“The basic difference is that they want to tax more and spend more and cut less,” he said. “We are doing it with more cuts and less tax.”

In addition to the deeper local government cut, Wilson’s proposal would reduce welfare grants 4.2% for all recipients and cut them further for families that include an able-bodied adult on the rolls for more than six months.

The conference committee’s budget calls for a 2.7% cut in welfare grants.

Wilson’s budget also calls for higher fee increases on community college and university students. The legislative plan would raise fees 20% at community colleges, 22% in the California State University system and 10% at the University of California.

Both plans would remove the renters tax credit, which pays $60 to tenants and $120 for couples. Wilson wants to repeal the credit while the Legislature’s plan would suspend it for two years.

Contributing to this story was Times staff writer Carl Ingram.