State Includes Promise to Study Distribution Method : Budget Plan Could Help County Now, in Future

SACRAMENTO —  San Diego County won some short-term fiscal relief and what could turn out to be a major step toward long-term stability Thursday as state budget negotiators approved a $41.5-billion spending plan and sent it to the Senate and Assembly floors for final approval.

As expected, the proposed budget includes $19 million to buy a North County campus for San Diego State University and money to begin several construction projects at the university’s main campus in San Diego.

The budget also contains about $10 million for construction of new buildings at UC San Diego and at the school’s medical center in Hillcrest, and an additional $5 million for projects at Mesa, Palomar and Grossmont community colleges.

Squabble Over $88 Million

The budget, for the fiscal year beginning July 1, was approved late Thursday, soon after legislators compromised to end a week-long stalemate over how to distribute $88 million in new state aid to counties.

San Diego County, which eventually got about $4.7 million, was at the center of the fray, battling alongside Orange County against Los Angeles County.

Though the decision meant the difference of only a few million dollars in the counties’ billion-dollar budgets, they fought bitterly over the funds, which they said are desperately needed to keep pace with the rising costs of programs required by the state.

Perhaps even more important for San Diego, though, was a hastily worded provision that could lead to the overhaul of a formula the state has used for nearly a decade to divide up aid for counties whose budgets were cut by the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. San Diego County has sued the state in an effort to overturn that formula.

A Gavel-Banging Session

Negotiations over the new money among local government lobbyists in a committee hearing room became so furious at one point that Sen. Alfred E. Alquist (D-San Jose), chairman of the two-house budget conference committee, banged his gavel and ruled that any lobbyist conversing in the aisles would be deprived of his county’s share of the disputed funds.

Alquist’s move quieted the audience for a time, but the committee itself went right on fighting, with Sen. Marian Bergeson, a Newport Beach Republican who also represents parts of San Diego County, battling Los Angeles Democrats Sen. Alan Robbins and Assemblywoman Maxine Waters.

“We’re usually a nice quiet family, until we get a pot of money and try to divvy it up,” said Larry Naake, executive director of the County Supervisors Assn. of California. “I’ve tried to tell them (the counties) to be like Ozzie and Harriet. But they seem more intent on being like the Ewings,” he said, referring to the fractious family on the television show, “Dallas.”

Traditionally, state aid for counties has been doled out through a system based on how much the counties were spending on health services programs in 1977, the year before Proposition 13 cut the property tax and required a two-thirds vote of the people to raise taxes or create new ones.

Recent Social Problems

But San Diego, Orange and a few other California counties that a decade ago were just beginning to experience the social problems brought on by rapid urbanization were at that time spending relatively little on programs to treat such urban ills. Orange and San Diego counties also had a tradition of conservative elected leadership that looked askance at the health and social programs for the poor.

Los Angeles County, by contrast, was already spending heavily on public health services when Proposition 13 was enacted, so it has been the prime benefactor of the state funds allocated to help the counties withstand the impact of the property tax cut.

A decade later, the smaller but rapidly growing counties now argue, they are spending more and more to treat drug and alcohol abuse, provide medical care for the poor, and treat the mentally ill wandering the streets and parks of their cities. But they’re still getting nearly the same percentage of state funding that they did in 1978.

“That formula was designed 10 years ago, and this is not the same state it was 10 years ago,” said Assemblyman John Vasconcellos, a powerful Santa Clara Democrat who sided with Bergeson against the Los Angeles legislators, ensuring that the matter would be dragged out until a compromise was reached.

‘Simply An Unfair Method’

Bergeson said use of the traditional formula “would literally destroy many of these programs that are already in serious trouble. It’s simply an unfair method of computing for those counties.”

But Waters said Los Angeles, too, is hard-pressed. She said the county is short $77 million for next year’s budget and $45 million of that is in health programs.

Waters chided Bergeson for arguing over the $78 million rather than working to persuade Gov. George Deukmejian to help all of the counties by decreasing his proposed $700 million tax rebate or softening his demand for a $1-billion surplus for emergencies.

“We’re scrapping about a measly amount of money in relation to what we could be talking about,” Waters said. “The governor wants a billion-dollar reserve, which means we have to cut and cut and cut further.

“Go and get us some relief from that requirement,” Waters told Bergeson and a Republican colleague. “Go and ask him if he’ll take $600 million, if he’ll take $700 million. We’ll give you some money for Orange County. We’ll give you some money for San Diego. We’ll increase it for everybody.”

Eventually, lawmakers added another $10 million cut from other programs to an original pot of $78 million. To divide the money, they used a compromise formula based partly on population, partly on current spending and partly on pre-Proposition 13 spending levels.

Promise Is Extracted

Bergeson was also able to extract a promise from the Los Angeles legislators that the old formula opposed by San Diego County would be reexamined and probably replaced by a new scheme more accurately reflecting the current needs of the state’s rapidly growing counties.

“This distribution may not be as fair as we would like,” Bergeson said, “but we got an assurance that it would be one-time only, and we’ve built in a commitment to provide a thorough investigation and recommendation for a truly reflective formula.”

Here is a summary of the major San Diego items included in the budget approved by the conference committee Thursday:

- $19 million to buy land for satellite state university campuses in San Diego and Ventura counties and $220,000 for planning the North County campus.

- $4 million to rehabilitate the women’s gymnasium at SDSU and to begin work on plans for a new student services building, renovation of the chemistry-geology building and improvements in the life sciences building.

- $5.2 million toward completion and modernization of the in-patient tower at the UCSD Medical Center.

- $5 million to UCSD for engineering equipment and for plans to build an addition to the central library and renovate the computer science building and Urey Hall.

- $3.3 million to Miramar Community College to erect a building for business, management, computer science and general purpose classrooms.

- $1 million to remove asbestos at Mesa Community College.

- $572,000 to Palomar Community College to remodel seven buildings.

- $135,000 for an outdoor physical education facility at Grossmont Community College.

- $10.6 million to the state parks system for improvements at Silver Strand State Beach, South Cardiff State Beach, South Carlsbad State Beach, Old Town State Park, and the Tijuana River National Estuarine.

- $1.2 million to San Diego County for Spring Valley redevelopment and $500,000 for redevelopment of the Otay Lake campground.

- $500,000 to San Diego for restoration work at Balboa Park and Belmont Park.