Wilson Says State Is Bouncing Back : Economy: The governor begins a tour touting his administration’s role in helping to engineer California’s comeback.

An upbeat Gov. Pete Wilson on Monday began a five-day tour of California to sell recession-weary citizens on his view that the state is on the verge of a great economic comeback with the help of his administration.

Wilson promised 120 San Fernando Valley business leaders that “California is coming back” as he unveiled a new set of moves to simplify state regulations and was praised by half a dozen business owners for encouraging them to stay in California and expand.

The governor’s bid to pound home his message of an impending economic renewal comes less than a year before he faces an uphill reelection fight. Wilson’s personal performance rating with voters is a dismal 15%, a popularity morass that can be partly blamed on the state’s economy.

“This is our first stop on our greatest hits tour,” said Lisa Bierer, Wilson’s press deputy. “Our message is that things have been really abominable but now they are getting better.”

On Monday, Wilson told Valley business leaders that his administration has taken significant steps to improve the state’s business climate, citing passage of a workers’ compensation reform measure and a program to make it easier for young families to buy homes.

The high cost of workers’ compensation insurance and housing “are the two major impediments to job creation” in California, Wilson said.

Pressed by reporters, Wilson said “it is too early to quantify (the success of) our efforts” to help business expansion and retention in California. “It’s not all going to happen overnight,” the governor said.

Wilson unveiled five new administrative steps that he will soon take to further his pro-business agenda, two of them aimed at clearing away rules in the state’s Environmental Protection Agency.

The reforms include a top-to-bottom review of Cal-EPA regulations and deadlines for the agency to meet in processing business applications for environmental permits.

Such initiatives will “simplify, but they are not going to compromise environmental quality or worker safety,” Wilson said.

Wilson also proposed that business leaders join several task forces to help his administration weed out unnecessary red tape, that businesses fill out customer service surveys to tell of their experiences with state bureaucracies and that six one-stop centers--where businesses can get clearances to build or expand from a variety of agencies at one location--be established across the state.

Last week, Wilson joined Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan to unveil the first of these one-stop centers in South-Central Los Angeles to serve businesses damaged during last year’s rioting.

On Monday, Universal City-North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President James M. Mahfet, in an imitation of talk-show host Phil Donahue, walked among the business crowd with a microphone urging individuals to stand up and tell their stories of how the Wilson administration had helped them.

Among the testimonials were ones from Michael Silver, owner of Pure-Etch Co., a firm that recycles computer circuit boards. Silver said his firm had planned to build its new plant in Nevada but instead moved to Salinas after the governor’s office intervened to expedite its environmental permits.

Likewise, Kevin McCarney, owner of two Mexican restaurants, said that because of Wilson’s efforts to reform workers’ compensation, he has been encouraged to open a third new Poquito Mas restaurant. The Wilson team’s reforms are a “wonderful beginning,” McCarney said. “It’s going to put a lot of small businesses in the mode to expand.”

The setting for Monday’s event was the bindery plant of Ad Industries Inc., the North Hollywood firm that won recognition last week when it announced its decision to stay in California rather than move its plant--with 110 employees--to Nevada.

Richard Wurzel, owner of Ad Industries, said his company had been prepared to move out of state after it lost a contract for a bindery job for the city of Los Angeles to a Minnesota penitentiary that was paying its inmate-employees 65 cents an hour.

But Wurzel has recently decided to stay in California, encouraged in part by Wilson’s efforts at improving the state’s business climate.