BUDGET BILLS WOULD RESTORE STATE LAWS.

Byline: Harrison Sheppard Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, plans to introduce bills today to restore a strict state spending limit and the governor's authority to make midyear cuts without the Legislature, two measures he said would help the state avoid future fiscal crises.

McClintock, one of the staunchest fiscal conservatives in Sacramento, said the spending limit would tie state spending to increases in inflation and population. Such a measure, he said, would have resulted in a state budget of $67 billion next year, instead of $76 billion that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed.

The other measure would allow the governor to make midyear cuts without legislative approval if spending begins to exceed revenue.

Both powers were part of state law for years. The Gann limit was passed by voters in 1979 and remained law until 1990 when it was weakened through another ballot measure.

The midyear-cut authority was state law from 1939 to 1983, when the Legislature changed it. McClintock, then an assemblyman, was one of the few dissenting votes.

``What breaks my heart is there are two measures that would completely, permanently cure the state's financial problems, and they are as simple as adopting two laws that had been on the books for many years and that served the state and served it well,'' McClintock said.

Both of McClintock's bills are being proposed as constitutional amendments to be placed on the ballot, requiring either a two-thirds vote of the Legislature or a signature-gathering effort to qualify.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger's Department of Finance, said the administration has not seen the bills yet and so could not comment on them in detail. But in concept, he said, the governor agrees with the idea of increasing his midyear-cut authority, and included a provision in Proposition 58 on the March 2 ballot that would do so, although not to the extent McClintock is proposing.

The proposition allows the governor to declare a fiscal emergency and call the Legislature into session to deal with spending cuts, and the Legislature cannot recess until it has dealt with the issue.

Schwarzenegger had originally proposed a much stricter spending cap for the ballot, but it ran into opposition from the Democrat-controlled Legislature so he negotiated a weaker version that is now termed a balanced budget amendment.

Harrison Sheppard, [phone]

harrison.sheppard(at)dailynews.com