Wilson to Seek Merit Pay for Teachers : Government: Proposal faces fight in the Legislature. Governor also acknowledges that his first budget will run in the red.

By DANIEL M. WEINTRAUB

Dec. 22, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Pete Wilson will press the Legislature next year to approve merit pay for the state’s best teachers, a concept he says will help improve the quality of teaching in California’s public schools, the governor told reporters Saturday.

The Republican chief executive, in an interview in his Capitol office, also said he would support a state constitutional amendment to overturn last week’s Supreme Court decision limiting the ability of local governments to increase the sales tax for special programs.

And he acknowledged that his first budget as governor will end the fiscal year in the red.

Wilson’s disclosure that he will propose merit pay for teachers adds another item to a list of issues on which the governor and the Democratic-controlled Legislature are expected to clash in 1992.

Already, Wilson has proposed a ballot initiative that would slash welfare grants for poor women and their children and give the governor sweeping powers over the budget. He also has asked the Legislature to eliminate the renters’ tax credit, which now goes only to individual tenants earning $20,500 a year or less. Democratic leaders have said they will fight both proposals.

Now Wilson, who since last year’s campaign for governor has been speaking fondly about the possibility of merit pay for teachers, says he is ready to put forward a concrete proposal. The California Teachers Assn., the state’s biggest teachers union, opposes the concept and can be expected to enlist the help of the Democratic leadership in the Legislature, which has close ties with the CTA.

“We should reward excellence,” Wilson said. “We should pay not only decent but competitive wages in order to recruit and retain quality teachers. And we ought to pay the best compensation to the best teachers.”

Wilson said he believes the quality of teachers and education in the state are “erratic” because “there is not the kind of accountability you find in almost every other line of work to measure performance. Without that, I don’t think you are able to distinguish between mediocre performance and really quality performance.”

The governor rejected arguments by the teachers union and others that no fair way can be devised to rate teacher performance. He said a new testing program he signed into law earlier this year will help by providing results for individual students instead of only for an entire grade level at each school.

“I think the measurement of teacher performance can and should be geared to measuring student performance. I do not think it is beyond the capacity of intelligent men and women to devise a fair test--one that is not subjective, one that is fair, one that will encourage all to strive for the maximum result.”

On the issue of taxes, Wilson said he was “disappointed” last week when the state Supreme Court threw out a half-cent sales tax for jails and court construction that a majority of San Diego County voters had imposed on themselves. The court said a two-thirds vote was required--a provision placed into law by the property tax-cutting Proposition 13 in 1978. Some local governments had hoped they could circumvent the law, which applies to “special taxes,” by creating new single-purpose agencies to levy and collect the taxes.

Wilson earlier this year backed a change in the law to expand the power of local governments to levy such taxes with a majority vote to pay for schools and anti-drug efforts. He said he would support a constitutional amendment to overturn the court’s decision if the Legislature could muster the two-thirds vote needed in the Assembly and Senate to place such a measure on the ballot.

Wilson also acknowledged for the first time that the budget he proposed and signed into law earlier this year is certain to produce a deficit by the end of the fiscal year on June 30. He said his Jan. 10 budget message to the Legislature will propose an 18-month solution to the current budget shortfall, essentially rolling over this year’s deficit into next year.

Wilson is expected to campaign frequently for Republican candidates next year, hoping to persuade Californians to give the GOP a majority in at least one house of the Legislature for the first time since 1970.

The governor said he intends to remind voters of proposed legislation that Democrats have blocked by using their control of the Legislature’s committee system.

He said voters should send Republicans to Sacramento “only if they want the changes that would provide them with affordable car insurance, with a jobs climate that will allow California to compete . . . for jobs, only if they want a public safety system that will keep their streets safe. The list goes on.”