Valley-Area Lawmakers Key to Budget’s OK

State Senate President Pro Tem David Roberti urged his colleagues to “get a life.” Assemblyman Pete Knight ignored a personal pitch from the governor. And state Sen. Don Rogers broke with a longstanding tradition.

That was the scene over the last two nights as San Fernando Valley-area lawmakers joined their colleagues in the Senate and Assembly in passing a $52.1-billion budget in sessions that lasted into the wee hours of the morning.

As leader of the Senate and a participant in closed-door budget negotiations, Roberti (D-Van Nuys) spent much of Monday night and Tuesday morning coaxing reluctant lawmakers to avoid a repeat of 1992’s two-month budget stalemate.

In an emotion-tinged speech, Roberti noted that he missed much of Father’s Day on Sunday with his 89-year-old father because he was closeted with Gov. Pete Wilson in a 16-hour marathon session aimed at getting a budget to the governor’s desk by the start of the fiscal year July 1.

“Let’s get a life here. The law, the law, the law says we have to pass it on time,” Roberti told his colleagues. He concluded with a final appeal, saying: “We put a budget together that is not so bad. Please vote for it and tell the public we can comply with the law.”

The Senate action approving the budget by a 27-11 margin at 2:43 a.m. Tuesday capped two days of intense maneuvering, marked by numerous pleas targeted at reluctant Valley-area lawmakers to back the budget deal hammered out over the weekend.

After Roberti and other leaders completed the negotiations, Wilson began to round up votes, courting Valley-area Republican Assembly members who did not look at the budget kindly.

His pleas fell on deaf ears.

They rejected the message of his telephone calls, saying they could not go along with the centerpiece of his budget to shift $2.6 billion in property taxes from cities, counties and special districts to schools.

“Local government shouldn’t take that much of a cut,” said freshman Assemblyman William J. (Pete) Knight (R-Palmdale), who listened to Wilson’s telephone pitch but still voted against the budget.

“Sure, it was hard to turn down the governor. I don’t like to do that,” the former Palmdale mayor acknowledged.

Despite Republican objections, Valley-area Democrats lined up in favor of the spending plan and, shortly before 5 a.m., they groggily helped muster the needed 54 votes to send it to the Senate.

Twelve hours later, the issue was debated in the upper chamber, where Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) urged his colleagues to fight the budget, blasting the proposal as being filled with tax loopholes.

Hayden was the only area senator to object to the proposal, while Democrats Roberti and Herschel Rosenthal of Los Angeles voted in favor of the budget along with Republicans Cathie Wright of Simi Valley and Don Rogers of Tehachapi.

In the Assembly, Democrats Terry Friedman, Burt Margolin and Barbara Friedman, all of whom represent parts of the Valley, and Richard Katz of Sylmar favored the spending package. Republicans Knight, Paula Boland of Granada Hills, Pat Nolan of Glendale and Bill Hoge of Pasadena cast votes against the measure.

Under the proposal, voters will decide in November whether to make permanent a temporary half-cent surcharge on the sales tax.

Assuming that voters approve the tax measure, the City of Los Angeles would still lose an estimated $47 million, according to the legislative analyst’s office. Other cities’ losses include Agoura Hills, $88,000; Burbank, $1.3 million; Calabasas, $33,000; Lancaster, $66,000; San Fernando, $220,000; Santa Clarita, $257,000, and Westlake Village, $47,000.

But Boland said she objected to the spending blueprint because her constituents want their property taxes “to stay with local government” and not be “sent to Sacramento for education.”

As the outcome of the vote hung in the balance in the Assembly, Boland said, she received two telephone calls from Wilson attempting to woo her to his side. She described the conversations as amiable, saying the governor “didn’t offer me anything and I didn’t ask him for anything, and that’s not the way I operate.”

With Wilson able to round up only eight Republicans and with the Assembly vote total still short of the 54 needed for passage, Democrats, including Katz, focused their energies on reluctant rookie Assemblywoman Debra Bowen (D-Los Angeles). After speaking with Katz for about 90 minutes throughout the night and others, the Westside Democrat became the decisive vote needed to approve the spending plan for the new fiscal year.

In the end, Katz said, Bowen opted to end the kind of gridlock that resulted in last year’s record stalemate.

“I think the budget is the best we can get for the City of Los Angeles in terms of protecting police and fire (departments),” Katz said. “I don’t think it’s going to get any better.”

Other Valley-area Democrats were attempting to soften the impact of budget cuts to city and county governments. For example, Friedman sought to negotiate a compromise between Los Angeles County officials upset with the heavy cuts to their budget and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), who quarterbacked the budget on behalf of Wilson.

“I was trying to minimize the harmful impact on Los Angeles County government,” said Friedman, who was seeking support for a measure that would allow local governments to keep a tax levied on banks and savings and loans. Friedman said he believed that county officials were justified in objecting to the cuts totaling $273 million, but chided them for failing to come up with alternative proposals.

In the Senate, two Republicans who typically vote against state budgets sided with Roberti.

Rogers, whose district includes Santa Clarita, Palmdale and Lancaster, said that since 1978, when he was first elected to the Legislature, he could recall only voting for one other state budget. The staunch conservative said he broke with tradition because he “thought it was probably as good a deal as we’re going to get.”

Wright, elected to the Assembly in 1980, said she had supported only about three state budgets. She said she had sought to soften the amount of property tax shifted from cities but could not rally enough support to push that proposal through the Legislature. So, she reluctantly agreed to go along with Wilson.

Hayden, however, had a different take on the spending plan. He urged Democrats to hold out for revisions, noting that their fight on behalf of education last year ended with schools getting more state funds.

“I still believe that we could have done better,” Hayden said. “By that I mean, just like certain Democrats committed to fight for schools last year, we should have committed ourselves to fight for some reform of the system of tax loopholes, which is like a vampire on the health of the economy.”