Wilson’s Plans for Budget Windfall

Re “Despite Windfall, Wilson Omits Call for Income Tax Cut,” May 15: Despite the $2.2-billion “windfall,” Gov. Pete Wilson’s budget includes $289 million in benefit reductions for the elderly and disabled, nearly $500 million in cuts to poor families and a $525-million tax increase for renters. The budget as proposed includes a bare 1% reserve to protect against future disasters and uncertainties.

The intricacies of Prop. 98’s school-spending guarantee provide an infusion of sorely needed funds for California’s public schools. However, the additional $2.1 billion leaves per-pupil spending at 84% of the national average. A number of other unmet needs remain. Most of the governor’s proposed child care initiative for parents leaving welfare for work is funded with federal, not state, dollars. The proposed local government relief pays approximately $1 out of $10 lost due to the 1992 and 1993 property tax shifts. Proposed funding for welfare-to-work training programs is less than half the amount needed to assist those facing time limits and work requirements. Last, but certainly not least, are the state’s unmet infrastructure needs totaling $35 billion, including $15 billion for transportation and $10 billion for schools.

JEAN ROSS, Exec. Dir.

California Budget Project

Sacramento

* The state’s $2.2-billion surplus can be traced directly to the $3 billion diverted from local governments in each of the past six years to pay the state’s obligations to public education. Now Wilson proposes to give back $200 million to cities and counties. That is only 7% of what is still being stolen. That also leaves nothing for the special districts that operate parks, fire stations and libraries, from which Wilson and the Legislature also stole funds.

This money will come with miles of string, pulled from Sacramento. It cannot possibly compensate for $3 billion that had no strings.

DAVID E. ROSS

Oak Park

* Subsidized child care to help welfare recipients go to work without child care concerns? What an insult to working parents like myself who have for many years found a way to get child care and go to work.

Instead of totally funding child care, have the recipients, who are only going to work 32 hours a week, care for each other’s children. The government could provide small facilities and hire a credentialed mentor for each facility. The mentor would teach and supervise the recipients while they care for the children. This could also be considered a training program. Then maybe subsidized child care for welfare recipients wouldn’t be such an insult to working, taxpaying parents.

CHERRIE BERKLEY

Los Angeles

* After years of observing our public schools attempt to educate children in overcrowded classrooms, it is gratifying to know that class-size reduction has become a priority. I wonder, however, if anyone else is concerned that, according to the The Times (May 13), 50% of the people hired in the LAUSD to teach these smaller classes are not credentialed teachers. While the children are placed in smaller classes, they are possibly placed with a “teacher” who has little preparation in the teaching of the three Rs, classroom control or child development.

RICK DAVISSON

Beverly Hills

* Perhaps before Democrats, Republicans and the mass media gush over the surplus money in the state budget, they should stop and consider: Where did the money come from? Who is currently facing the harshest conditions?

The money comes from taxpayers, of course. Most of it comes from the working lower-middle class and the working poor. Both groups tend to be renters. Wilson suspended the renter’s credit “temporarily” when the economy was spiraling down. Now, there is surplus money which, at least partially, comes from the denied renter’s credit. The banks, corporations and other politicians’ friends already enjoy the benefit of a low real estate tax and a tax credit. Give at least some similar benefit to working people, who were run out of the buying market by inflated prices.

LINDA BOLARD

Fullerton