Burton Hands Out Advice To Schwarzenegger, GOP On Last Day
By Steve Lawrence, Associated Press - December 1, 2004SACRAMENTO (AP) _ On his last day as the state Senate's leader, John Burton suggested that California's budget problems won't be solved without a tax increase and that efforts to require businesses to provide employee health insurance will continue.
"At some point the Republicans and the governor will understand that to get out of this budget problem ... we can't just hope that the economy gets better," the San Francisco Democrat said Tuesday at his last news conference before leaving the Legislature.
"There are going to be ways to consolidate and save some money in state programs, but also as we look into the future ... we are going to have to look for sources of new revenue."
He joked that could come through taxes, robbing a bank, winning the lottery or "finding that almost all members of the Legislature have some fair degree of Native American blood" and opening a casino.
The Legislature's budget analyst, Elizabeth Hill, said earlier this month that the state faces a $6.7 billion deficit in the fiscal year that starts next July 1 and that the deficit will balloon to nearly $10 billion in the 2006-07 fiscal year without budget cuts, tax increases or both.
Spokesman H.D. Palmer said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was determined to avoid a tax hike.
"Our focus is controlling the growth of spending, because the failure to control the growth of spending is what drove this state into the fiscal crisis we are trying to climb out of," he said.
Tuesday was last day in office for Burton and several other veteran lawmakers who were forced out by term limits, including Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, who won his first legislative race in 1966.
Burton, a member of a legendary San Francisco political family, was elected to the Assembly two years earlier but spent eight years in Congress and six years out of office before returning to the Assembly in 1988. He was elected to the Senate in 1996 and became president pro tempore in 1998.
A sometimes profane, cantankerous liberal, he was probably best known as a champion of the poor, and he said he never seriously considered running for mayor of San Francisco because he didn't want to make budget cuts that hurt the needy.
"I am not a gutsy guy," he said. "I would not want the choice between screwing this group of people, the general assistance people, or closing an AIDS clinic. I would end up shooting myself or somebody else. I am really, despite what people think, an absolute wuss."
He got choked up when he described how his father, a doctor, wouldn't charge poor patients, telling them to use the money to buy shoes for their kids. "I can't believe I'm getting emotional," he said.
Burton was the lead author of Proposition 72, the Nov. 2 ballot measure that would have required large and midsize employers to help pay for health insurance for their employees. It was narrowly rejected by voters, but Burton said the issue "isn't going to go away."
He suggested the decision by Jack in the Box restaurants to provide health coverage for their employees was a sign business owners realize it's a step they'll have to take.
"People are talking about it for the first time in a long time because they see it coming," he added.
Burton also said:
_ Proposition 13, the 1978 property tax slash, "caused almost all of the fiscal problems in the state" and created tax inequities between property owners, but said it would be difficult to reform because "the businesses and big landowners who benefit by it would buy a lot of TV spots" attacking the effort.
_ Democrats shouldn't slow down efforts to legalize driver's licenses for illegal immigrants and gay marriage. "I remember when we were all supposed to go slow on civil rights for blacks," he said. "When something's right it's right."
_ Making the Legislature part-time is a "dumb idea." The Legislature was part-time when he was first elected to the Assembly and, because of special sessions, lawmakers spent almost as much time in Sacramento then as they do now, he said.
_ Term limits have resulted in a Legislature that is more reflective of the state's population but less experienced. "There's nothing wrong with people knowing what they are doing," he added.
_ He gets along better with Schwarzenegger, a Republican, than he did with Gov. Gray Davis, a fellow Democrat, because "Gray was uptighter than Arnold." But Burton suggested Schwarzenegger, who labeled Democrats "girlie men" in one campaign speech, should watch what he says when he speaks on the stump.
When "he gets in front of a crowd it's like somebody is snorting two lines of coke,'' Burton said. "Crowds are to him like fund-raising calls were to Gray."
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