State Budget Panel Cuts $1.6 Billion

Lawmakers took a significant step toward resolving California’s budget impasse Wednesday, slashing $1.6 billion from the spending plan. But as the night wore on, a standoff developed when Assembly Democrats held out for a deal to provide state aid to legal immigrants who will lose federal welfare next month.

In a flurry of activity, the joint Assembly-Senate budget conference committee agreed late in the afternoon to cut a variety of state programs contained in the $68-billion budget. The spending plan is now six weeks past the constitutional deadline for having a budget in place.

The cuts range from a $3-million reduction in Controller Kathleen Connell’s budget to elimination of a $50-million fund to finance public works projects and a $32-million cut in prenatal care for illegal immigrants.

“It’s certainly major progress,” Craig Brown, Gov. Pete Wilson’s Department of Finance director, said Wednesday afternoon.

But during the evening, as state senators attempted to convene the conference committee in a Capitol hearing room and wrap up their work, Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno) and other Assembly Democrats remained in the speaker’s office.

The scene at the Capitol was among the most bizarre in memory. As lobbyists, reporters and others milled about the hearing room, senators asked the sergeants-at-arms to call the Assembly conferees to the meeting, to no avail. This went on for more than two hours, with no response from Bustamante and other Assembly Democrats.

Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer and Assembly GOP Leader Curt Pringle of Garden Grove shuttled in and out of Bustamante’s office hoping to break the impasse. But Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) emerged late in the evening and said, “There is no deal.”

Still, Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), co-chairman of the conference committee, said he “suspects” that there will be money for a state-funded program to assist poor legal immigrants as part of the final budget deal.

Such a program would be aimed at least at helping them, and probably would include state-funded food stamps, an idea that has appeal to Central Valley farm district lawmakers. They note that such a program would be a boon to California’s annual $20-billion farm industry.

“We’re trying to make sure it is a proposal that can be supported in our caucus and by the governor,” said Assembly Pringle, who is taking the lead for Republicans in the budget talks.

At the same time, Wilson and Republican lawmakers are pressing for restoration of $100 million to the governor’s so-called COPS program, which gives cities and counties grants to hire police officers and buy equipment.

Most Democrats also support the $100-million police subsidies. But they want money for legal immigrants, an issue that Bustamante pushed to the fore during this summer’s budget talks.

In an emotional news conference last month, Bustamante talked of his grandparents and how he could not go home unless he succeeded in helping legal immigrants who have long worked in California.

Under his initial proposal, the program would have cost more than $120 million. Pringle said he believes that the pared-down program will cost less than $65 million, possibly much less, and cover a smaller group of legal immigrants.

This year’s budget impasse, the second longest in state history, comes as the state received $2.3 billion more in tax revenue than it expected when Californians filed their April 15 tax returns.

Budget talks deteriorated when Wilson failed to win Democratic approval for his proposed $1-billion income tax cut, prompting the governor to end negotiations aimed at settling a $1.36-billion legal judgment against the state. Rather than agreeing to pay it off over 10 years, as Democrats wanted, the Republican governor decreed that the debt would be paid this year--forcing lawmakers to begin cutting.

In a move that would affect parents and public schoolchildren, the budget committee has shifted $50 million in school funding to extend the school year by a day. Under the plan engineered by Sen. Steve Peace (D-El Cajon), the state would “buy back” at a cost of $50 million one of eight so-called in-service training days for public school teachers.

The eight training days, also called pupil-free days, typically fall on Fridays. Students get the day off while teachers receive instruction on various aspects of teaching. Peace said his goal is to have teachers receive all their training during non-school days, so students would attend classes for the full 180-day school year.