Fiscal Time Bomb Seen Facing Next Governor : Politics: Assembly’s Vasconcellos challenges three contenders to explain how they will pay for new programs they are promising the voters.

SACRAMENTO —  Asserting that a financial “time bomb” awaits the next governor, the veteran chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday challenged the three leading gubernatorial candidates to explain how they would pay for the attractive new programs they are promising voters.

Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-San Jose) said the future governor will be faced with a problem candidates don’t like to talk about: whether they will cut services or raise taxes. He noted that the state is $1.6 billion short of what it will cost just to maintain current state services.

Vasconcellos issued his challenge in letters to Republican Sen. Pete Wilson and Democrats Dianne Feinstein, the former mayor of San Francisco, and John K. Van de Kamp, the state’s attorney general.

In his letter, Vasconcellos said: “With California’s budget already running on empty, any further demands on already over-extended systems can only make matters worse, even cause a collapse.”

To make his point, the Democratic lawmaker, who has headed the Assembly’s budget-writing committee for the last 10 years, ran down a list of cuts proposed by Gov. George Deukmejian in his proposed budget to close the $1.6-billion revenue gap. The governor is proposing a freeze on welfare grants, delaying payment of state bills and other painful measures.

“It’s like he wants to get out of office before it all collapses,” Vasconcellos said of Deukmejian’s proposed $53.7-billion budget, his last as governor.

All three candidates for governor are proposing schemes to upgrade the school, justice and transportation systems as well as ways to clean up the environment.

Feinstein, when Vasconcellos’ question was posed to her in Los Angeles, said: “I think it is a problem that will have to be solved after I get to Sacramento, and in a number of different ways.”

The Democrat said she supports Proposition 111, the transportation funding measure on the June 5 ballot that would increase gasoline and highway user taxes and revise the voter-approved government spending limit to give the governor and Legislature more flexibility in solving budget problems.

Passage of Proposition 111 by the voters “would be a big signal that the people are willing to put their money where their mouth is, to vote to change the Gann expenditure limit and move away from the Prop. 13 mentality,” Feinstein said. “One of the things that’s happened is that nobody can really responsibly propose a change in the tax system today without getting pilloried for it. It has everybody very gun shy.”

Feinstein said that in addition to supporting the measure to raise the gasoline tax, she would be willing to consider readjusting income tax brackets as a means of raising general taxes.

Van de Kamp, with each new program he sponsors, also offers a proposal on where the money will come from to pay for it. He would use a bond to finance his environmental program, extend the state’s 6 1/4% sales tax to candy to fund a proposed teacher corps, close corporate tax loopholes to pay for a war on drugs, and use an income tax checkoff to pay for public financing of elections.

But the attorney general so far has not taken a position on Proposition 111, a measure that most state budget experts say is the bare minimum that is needed to get a start on the current budget problem. Van de Kamp is waiting for sponsors of the measure to resolve differences with teacher groups, which are giving him political support, before he takes a position.

Republican Wilson has proposed creation of a state Environmental Protection Agency. He has also called for stricter sentencing of criminals and other anti-crime measures that could be costly to the state by keeping felons incarcerated for longer periods of time. And he wants to expand state services for children and provide additional prenatal services for poor women who are pregnant.

As for where the money will come from, a Wilson spokesman said in a brief response that he believes many of the programs will pay for themselves. For instance, in providing better prenatal programs, there will be fewer costs associated with premature births, said Bill Livingstone, Wilson’s press secretary. Livingstone said much depends on what voters do with Proposition 111--which Wilson supports.

Times political writers John Balzar and Keith Love contributed to this story.