Plan to Vote on Gas Tax Faltering, Katz Says

SACRAMENTO —  Gov. George Deukmejian’s plan for a November election on a proposed gas tax increase is generating little enthusiasm among lawmakers and has only a “slim” chance of winning their approval, legislative leaders said Thursday.

Assembly Transportation Committee Chairman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), at a breakfast session with The Times Sacramento Bureau, said legislators have expressed reluctance about spending $20 million to conduct a special election. In such elections, he said, voter turnout tends to be low and anti-tax sentiment high.

“I think the special election is a bad idea,” he said. “If (the gas tax proposal) goes down in a special election then no one will do anything for several years because the people will have spoken. No one will be willing to go out on a limb at that point.”

Expresses Doubt

Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco) said he doubts that there are even enough votes for the proposal to win the endorsement of his committee which has already approved a Democrat-backed measure which does not require a popular vote.

“I don’t believe in sending mixed signals to the rest of the house. It’s our obligation to recommend a policy and we’ve done it,” he said in a recent interview.

Earlier this month, Deukmejian proposed that a special election be called in November to allow voters to consider a 10-year, $20-billion transportation improvement program that would be financed primarily by a gasoline tax increase.

The governor, who made it clear that he was not formally endorsing any particular plan, suggested that voters be asked to consider a 9-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax increase, a $2.4-billion general obligation bond issue for mass transit and the lifting of the state’s constitutional spending limit as it applies to the additional revenue raised for transportation.

He recommended that the gasoline tax hike be gradual, beginning with a 5-cent increase, to be followed by 1-cent increases each of the next four years.

Since then, Sen. William Campbell (R-Hacienda Heights) has volunteered to carry the legislation outlined by the governor, but it has yet to be heard by any legislative committee.

Despite the predictions of the two legislative leaders, Kevin Brett, Deukmejian’s press secretary, said the governor is in just the initial stages of his negotiations with legislative leaders over a transportation plan.

“It is a very difficult process and there’s no denying that, but it is way too early to make any type of absolute pronouncements,” Brett said. “We know the road is going to be a difficult one and a long one (but) we are not foreclosing the possibility that there will be a transportation-funding program before the voters in November.”

Katz said the only way any plan for a November vote would have a chance of gaining legislative approval would be if the governor endorsed it and made a commitment to actively campaign for its passage. He said Deukmejian also must take an active role in engineering a compromise between lawmakers who want the spending limit lifted only for transportation and those who want it modified more broadly.

“You’re going to need everything going in the same direction and I don’t think that can be done by November,” he said. “My concern is that I don’t think you can get all the pieces together by November.”

But Brett said it was too early in the negotiating process for the governor to take a firm position on any plan. Others close to the governor have said privately that Deukmejian feels that if he commits his support to any particular plan at this juncture in his negotiations with lawmakers he will be forfeiting a valuable bargaining chip.

“We clearly are not into the thick of the give-and-take of negotiations with the Legislature yet,” Brett said.

The governor, he said, feels strongly that a transportation plan must be approved by the Legislature before it recesses July 21. Otherwise, he said, there is not time to mount a campaign for its passage in November.

“If this issue is to be resolved it has to be resolved in the next 10 or 12 weeks,” Brett said.

In addition to the legislators’ skepticism about prospects for a gasoline tax increase, there are signs of limited enthusiasm from business and labor groups whose support is also regarded as essential.

Jack Maltester, president of Californians for Better Transportation, a coalition of government, labor and business groups involved in transportation, said he has seen little effort by his members to begin raising money for a November campaign. Maltester said the business and labor groups in his membership support a gas tax increase and would provide the major financial support for any campaign.

“I don’t see any money coming from our people,” he said. “I haven’t talked to anybody who expects to get it through. The few people I’ve talked to just feel nothing’s going to happen in the Legislature.”

Meanwhile, Sacramento political consultant David Townsend said opinion polls taken in counties throughout the state still show strong voter opposition to a gasoline tax increase.

He said the recent jump in gasoline prices following the Alaskan oil spill has only served to remind voters of the volatility of gas prices and to strengthen their resolve to defeat any tax increase.

“The gasoline prices are going up. Consumers recognize they have very little protection against gas prices. It’s just not a popular tax,” Townsend said. “Anything over 3 or 4 cents will not pass, and to put a gas tax on the ballot is death. I’ve never seen a poll where 9 cents passes anywhere.”

Katz acknowledged that it would take a mammoth campaign effort to persuade voters that a substantial gasoline tax increase is their only hope of reducing congestion on the state’s crowded roads and highways.

He said the Democratic majority in the Legislature would prefer that the spending limit not be put before the voters until June, 1990, and that the gas tax increase be passed by the Legislature without voter approval.

But he said if all other issues could be resolved with Republican legislators and the governor the Democrats would probably give in on that issue.