Limited Visibility

In recent years it has been hard to fault Gov. Pete Wilson for failing to present a vision of a golden California sailing into the 21st Century on a calm sea of prosperity and creative government. After all, the SS California kept ramming the icebergs of recession and layoffs, along with voter initiatives that increasingly have restricted representative government in doing its job. With a state budget gurgling in red ink, the governor and Legislature were in no position to launch costly new initiatives.

As the ship of state sank lower in the water, Captain Pete stood on the bridge throwing life preservers here and there and, in some instances, pushing a passenger or two under--local government and welfare recipients, for example. “Triage,” one former aide called it.

But now the recession is over. And while state coffers aren’t exactly bursting, revenues have taken a healthy jump the past two years. There is, at least, enough breathing room to ponder the role and responsibility of state government in an age of high technology and rapid social change.

Alas, the skipper failed to look much further than the bow in his State of the State address Tuesday. And he glossed over or ignored some serious leaks in the vessel.

The initiatives Wilson did make generally were predictable and politically popular: a promise, without many details, to overhaul the welfare system, as required by Congress; more reductions in school class sizes; money for reading programs, and funds for classroom computers.

The education spending is not pure largess on the governor’s part. Under Proposition 198, about 60 cents out of every new revenue dollar must go to public education. Wilson put the money into class size reduction last year only after Democrats thwarted his proposal for a 15% state income tax cut. Democrats did go along with a 5% reduction in business taxes.

Tuesday, Wilson called for a 10% reduction in the bank and corporation tax over the next two years. Business leaders know that California has more urgent needs than additional tax cuts. On Tuesday, the California Chamber of Commerce and the Building Industry Assn. endorsed a plan to return to cities and counties as much as $3.6 billion in property tax revenues. This would compensate the local governments for the revenue Wilson used to bail out state school spending during the recession.

Local government finance is one of those holes in the hull of the SS California that need to be fixed. As in the past, the governor’s speech was more an amalgam of stitched-together ideas than a conceptual vision for California. It will be up to the Legislature to fill in the blanks.