Blurred Vision

In signing a $37-billion state budget after slashing $706 million with his veto authority, Gov. George Deukmejian had this to say of the final spending plan for the fiscal year starting Tuesday: “It is a budget with a vision of the future. It is a budget of hope. It is a budget of opportunity. A budget of humanity. It is a common-sense budget.”

Actually, it is none of the above, although the description of common sense might apply if California were a poor state without a history of providing outstanding service to its citizens. It is a bare-bones, hold-the-line budget typical only of past years when the state faced financial crisis.

In fact, the general-fund portion of the budget, which provides for most ongoing state programs, is even smaller than the budget that the Republican governor submitted last January. Back then, Chairman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara) of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee described the Deukmejian plan as a status-quo budget, worrisome more for what it lacked than for what if provided. What you see now is even less than was there in January.

There are a number of reasons for this. One is that this is a typical Deukmejian budget that is strong on education, for which he has always been commended, and on criminal justice and prisons. These pet items of the Deukmejian Administration constitute the functional equivalent of Ronald Reagan’s defense budget. The rest of the state budget, including almost all of the services that deal with human needs, is decidedly stingy.

Another reason is poor fiscal planning and management on the part of an Administration that prides itself on being a good state manager. At the end of January, Legislative Analyst William G. Hamm said that the Administration had underestimated Medi-Cal and welfare costs by $332 million and contributions to the state Public Employees’ Retirement fund by $114 million. What happened? Sure enough, the Legislature has had to pass emergency legislation providing $356 million to make up for budget shortages for the past fiscal year. Included was a $123-million deficit in the Medi-Cal program. Year-end budget shortfalls have ranged from $109 million to $417 million for each year of the Deukmejian Administration. That is not a sign of good management.

One of the reasons the governor had to veto so much out of the new budget last week was that the Legislature balked at his request to raid the Public Employees’ Retirement System of about $300 million in pension funds to balance proposed expenditures. Such raiding most likely is illegal. Even if it is not, such a transfer should not be justified in the absence of a fiscal emergency. Raiding the pension funds would have been Deukmejian’s way of maintaining a $1-billion state budget reserve. Since he did not get the money, he raided the budget itself.

It is important for the state to maintain a prudent reserve for emergencies, but the budget must provide for state needs first.

As for a vision of the future, the governor vetoed most visionary aspects of the budget as passed by the Legislature--including merit pay for university professors, mass transit, additional AIDS research, added funds for toxic cleanups, housing for the homeless and an innovative program for university students to perform public service. Those vetoes do not constitute visionary action. They do not even add up to common sense.