State Teachers’ Union Wary of Gas Tax Measure

California Teachers Assn. President Ed Foglia urged delegates Saturday to withhold support for a 9-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax increase and changes in the state spending limit until the union’s March meeting to ensure that provisions are included in the measures to protect spending for education.

In an address at the union’s state council meeting in Los Angeles, Foglia said that before the 200,000-member union supports the June ballot measure it must be sure that the spending limit does not diminish the gains education has achieved since Proposition 98, the school finance initiative that was passed by voters in 1988.

The teachers’ association has lobbied hard against the gasoline tax proposal as it is currently written. But that could change, Foglia said, if lawmakers follow through with their assurances that education would not be harmed by the proposals.

“We want to see the guarantees,” Foglia said. “It all sounds good, but you know how it is when you buy a car. We have to see it in writing.”

The gasoline tax increase would help finance a 10-year, $18.5-billion transportation improvement plan that includes programs to upgrade highways, expand mass transit and manage congestion.

Because the tax hike would raise more money than the state could spend under current restrictions, the increase would be tied to a proposed constitutional amendment that would modify the state’s spending limit. The tax cannot go into effect unless voters approve the ballot measure in June.

In brief remarks Saturday to the teachers, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) said he supports the union’s position that reforming the state’s spending limit not be used to reverse gains made in funding for education.

The teachers’ union has contended that the proposed constitutional amendment contained a loophole that provided that funds spent by the state for capital outlays would be outside the spending limit. If those funds were not considered in determining education’s 40% of the state budget, the union argued, schools would lose substantially.

Gov. George Deukmejian has warned that if the gasoline tax does not pass this year, the state will face a moratorium in new highway construction until July, 1991.