CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : PROPOSITION 165 : School Funding Enters Budget Powers Debate

SACRAMENTO —  With voters appearing evenly divided over Proposition 165--Gov. Pete Wilson’s ballot initiative on welfare and budget powers--the campaign has increasingly centered on an issue Californians repeatedly place at or near the top of their list of priorities: education.

Opponents say Proposition 165, which would shift some budget authority from the Legislature to the governor, would give Wilson unilateral authority to slice money from public schools.

But supporters of the initiative say it was written to exempt education from the expanded budget-cutting powers it would hand the state’s chief executive.

The measure, which also would slice welfare grants, would permit the governor to declare a fiscal emergency during bad budget times and, without the consent of the Legislature, cut programs to balance the state’s spending plan. The governor would have the same powers whenever a budget isn’t passed and signed into law by July 1--the start of the fiscal year.

The initiative exempts from such cuts “funding for public education” as provided in the state Constitution, which requires the state to set aside money for schools. Wilson aides say that means the governor would not be able to touch public school funding.

Opponents, however, say the protection in Wilson’s measure is no better than the safeguards provided by voter-approved Proposition 98, which has been refigured and manipulated by Wilson and lawmakers to slow the growth in school spending. Critics also say the added powers for the governor would allow Wilson or a successor to force the Legislature to cut school spending even if the governor could not enact those reductions on his own.

The debate over education spending has rekindled the bitter battle that absorbed the Capitol all summer, when Wilson and his Republican allies in the Legislature blocked action on the state budget until Democrats agreed to rein in long-term growth in school funding.

Wilson said the state’s fiscal future would be imperiled unless lawmakers voted to take back about $1 billion the schools received in the last fiscal year above the minimum required by Proposition 98. Because of the way school budgets are built, the move amounted to a $2-billion cut from what public education otherwise would have been entitled to receive in the current fiscal year. Democrats finally consented to Wilson’s plan after the governor agreed to borrow almost $1 billion from private sources and lend it to the schools this year to help them keep per-student spending equal to last year’s level.

Opponents of Proposition 165 say that if the measure had been in effect in the spring, Wilson could have implemented his original education plan without regard to opposition in the Legislature.

“The Legislature’s fight against those cuts would have been useless,” said state schools Supt. Bill Honig.

Not so, say Wilson Administration officials. Maureen DiMarco, the governor’s secretary for child development and education, said the measure would not allow the governor to cut education spending without a two-thirds vote of the Legislature. The governor, she said, could not reduce education spending even if the schools were getting more than Proposition 98 required, which happened last spring.

“It’s a categorical exemption,” DiMarco said. “There is no way to do that without getting the Legislature to do it.”

But even if DiMarco is right, the boost in gubernatorial powers contained in Proposition 165 would give the governor more leverage to work his will with the Legislature, opponents say. The governor, for instance, could threaten to use his powers to cut health and welfare services for the poor unless lawmakers gave in on education spending.

Honig said that power would allow the governor to “extort” legislators into voting to suspend Proposition 98, a move that requires the consent of two-thirds of the members of each house of the Legislature.

“We don’t want the governor to have the power that this would give him,” said Gloria Blackwell, state PTA president.

DiMarco, however, said giving the governor the authority to cut the budget on his own--while exempting education--is the best thing for schools.

“As you see a deficit grow, you have the ability to cut back in some areas to keep the size of the deficit from reaching these Gargantuan levels that it’s reached these last two years,” DiMarco said. “This truly would have been in education’s interest the last two years if the governor could have taken any measures to slow the growth of the deficit--as long as it wasn’t in education.”