Thousands Protest Budget Cuts

Thousands of teachers, nurses and other government employees massed in front of the Capitol and in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday to protest Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget cuts and plans to hold a fall special election.

The demonstrations came as a new poll showed limited public support for the governor’s plans to close a projected $6-billion budget shortfall by reducing spending.

Relations between Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers also continued to sour as the governor criticized them for accepting a pay raise at a time of budget crisis.

With the June 15 deadline for the Legislature to pass a budget only weeks away, the activists arrived at rallies in the Capitol and at Pershing Square in Los Angeles at what is traditionally the height of demonstration season. Protesters typically gather at the Capitol and in other places throughout California to make their voices heard on state spending issues large and small.

But Wednesday’s events were among the biggest of the year: the Sacramento crowd was said to have contained as many as 10,000 people while Los Angeles police estimated that Pershing Square held 5,000 to 6,000. The groups included members of various unions waving signs, chanting slogans and generally expressing outrage with the governor.

“He always says, ‘I represent the people, not the union.’ We are the people,” said Laura Zirino, a 39-year-old labor representative for the California School Employees Assn. who came to Pershing Square on a bus from San Diego with fellow union members. “He’s not listening to the people.”

Educators are particularly angry with Schwarzenegger over his proposal to withhold more than $2 billion that local schools say they are owed under voter-approved spending formulas. School officials say the governor had pledged to restore that money after they agreed to suspend those formulas last year.

They also want Schwarzenegger to back off his plan to call a fall special election that could cost voters as much as $80 million. The governor says he may call such an election in hopes of passing a constitutional cap on state spending that would force down the amount of money the state must provide schools, as well as a measure that would weaken tenure protections for public school teachers.

At a visit to a Sacramento charter school Wednesday, the governor defended his education agenda, saying the state spends nearly $50 billion on local schools and higher education and needs to find ways to better use that money instead of simply seeking more.

The governor and Democratic lawmakers are gridlocked on the issue. They have done little negotiating on the budget, opting instead to trade barbs in speeches and media appearances. The tone didn’t improve Wednesday as Schwarzenegger used an appearance at a California Chamber of Commerce breakfast to attack legislators for accepting a 12% pay raise.

“They’re complaining that since 1998 they haven’t been getting any money -- no raises since 1998,” Schwarzenegger said at the breakfast. “What have they accomplished since 1998?... They took the economy right down into the toilet, and they almost made the state go into bankruptcy.”

In December, California lawmakers’ basic salary will increase to $110,880, on top of the leased cars and $20,000 in annual expenses that out-of-town lawmakers get for travel and meals. Individual legislators have the option of refusing the raise.

Democrats said they did not ask for the money. It was granted by an independent commission, they said, and it would be funded out of the Legislature’s existing budget.

Wednesday’s protests came after the politically powerful California Teachers Assn. and its allies had spent tens of millions of dollars on television ads critical of the governor’s policies.

Since the campaign began in January, public opinion polls have shown a slide of about 20 percentage points in the governor’s approval rating with voters.

Schwarzenegger has tried to regain support with a revised budget this month that uses a surge of new revenue from an uptick in the economy to roll back a number of cuts he proposed in January and to create various government programs.

But the governor stopped short of restoring any of the $2 billion that school groups are demanding. He instead used most of the extra revenue to fund transportation programs.

A poll released by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California on Wednesday suggested the governor’s budget moves have yet to boost his approval rating. The poll of 2,003 Californians, taken from May 10 to May 17, showed the governor’s overall approval rating lingering at 40% of those surveyed. And it showed that although 70% of Californians support using the state’s additional revenue for transportation projects, 76% also want the money to go to education.

Republicans say the poll didn’t leave time for voters to learn about the increased spending in the governor’s revised budget, which was released May 13. To prove their point, they made the unusual move of publicly releasing their own internal poll of 800 voters that was conducted this week. It showed the governor’s approval rating bouncing back, to 50%.

Administration officials, meanwhile, said the governor would not be swayed from his agenda by pressure from union rallies or results of the latest polls.

“The governor has made it abundantly clear that we need to move forward with reforming the state’s budgeting system,” Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer said.

“I can understand why those who prefer the status quo don’t like that. But that is not going to deter the governor from moving forward.”

Times staff writer Robert Salladay contributed to this report. Halper reported from Sacramento and Shields from Los Angeles.