Top Democrats Reject Call for Special Session : Capitol: Roberti, Brown say they will not accede to the governor’s request for reconvening the Legislature to cut renters’ tax credit, state employee salaries and welfare payments to needy mothers.

SACRAMENTO —  Senate Democratic Leader David A. Roberti and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown on Wednesday threw ice water on Gov. Pete Wilson’s request for a special Christmas session of the Legislature to enact nearly $1 billion in cuts to prop up an unraveling state budget.

Both made it clear they did not intend to reconvene their houses to act on Wilson’s demands for eliminating $400 million in renters’ tax credits, state employee salary cuts and further trims in welfare payments to needy mothers.

“I think the governor’s idea is bizarre,” Brown said. “It would be a waste of taxpayers’ money to come back here to try to eliminate the renters’ credit. That is one of the only tax breaks that the middle class gets.”

At this point, the San Francisco Democrat said in an interview, “I have no intention of coming back to Sacramento.”

Roberti declared: “When it snows in Death Valley, I’ll come back to cut the renters’ credit.” Democrats consider renters to be part of their constituency while Republicans count homeowners more likely to be their voters.

Roberti (D-Los Angeles) also charged that by proposing to eliminate the renters’ tax credit, Wilson, in effect, had violated an informal “no new taxes” agreement reached with bipartisan legislative leaders only a few weeks ago.

“He’s opened the door on taxes,” the Democratic Senate leader said, adding that Democrats may come up with a tax increase program of their own, aimed at the highly paid and the business community.

Faced with a drastic reduction in revenues caused by the worse-than-feared economic recession, the Republican governor on Tuesday urged lawmakers to return to Sacramento to cut welfare payments that were reduced five months ago, lower state employee salaries by 5% and eliminate the $400-million credit available at tax time to 4 million lower- and middle-income renters. The regular session resumes Jan. 6.

In seeking swift action before Jan. 1 on cuts that the Democratic-controlled Legislature had rejected in the budget compromise last summer, the governor had seemed to anticipate that Roberti and Brown would reject his appeal. Even so, a Wilson spokesman warned Wednesday that “unless the Legislature takes action, the people of California are going to have (an unhappy) Christmas present of gigantic proportions, courtesy of the Democrats.”

At a news conference, Roberti assailed Wilson’s newly announced November, 1992, ballot initiative to dramatically cut welfare payments and the governor’s appeal for the Legislature to swiftly eliminate the renters’ income tax credits.

“If you want to dump on the least fortunate of people, why in the world do you want to be governor?” Roberti asked rhetorically. “If he wants to be governor of California that bad, God bless him. I think it’s cruel.”

Roberti also charged that Wilson focused on renters and welfare mothers as a way of trying to make peace with the conservative wing of the GOP, which was infuriated by taxes Wilson approved last summer to help resolve a $14-billion budget gap.

“He has sensed rebellion in his own party and he is going to bring them back,” Roberti said. “Going after welfare mothers, going after renters, that just strikes me as right-wing dogma.”

Roberti and Brown agreed that the state faces a fiscal crisis, but that the governor is targeting the wrong people.