"Squeeze, Cut and Trim"

As Governor, Reagan did just that--to his own ideas

"Horns begin to grow as soon as I cross the Mississippi," jokes Ronald Reagan to top aides who fret about his image, particularly among Easterners, as an inflexible ultraconservative. Most Americans want their next President to have right-wing principles, argues a Reagan adviser, but also to be "reasonable and able to recognize when it is necessary to make an exception" to conservative tenets. Reagan, in fact, demonstrated just that ability when he was Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. As Jimmy Carter and the nation have learned, a man's record as Governor provides only limited insight into how he would perform in the far more difficult role of President. Still, Reagan's conduct in the Governor's office did at least demonstrate that his conservative bark often carried little bite when he tackled the practical problems of governing his state. TIME Los Angeles Bureau Chief William Rademaekers and Correspondent Paul A. Witteman have reviewed the Reagan record as Governor. Their report:

Reagan swept Democratic Governor Pat Brown out of office by nearly 1 million votes, largely on his vow to "squeeze, cut and trim" state spending, taxes and payrolls, much as he now promises to reduce the federal budget if elected President. Yet during his two terms in Sacramento, Reagan did none of those things.

His failures were not entirely his fault. A Governor, like a President, is partially a captive of the situations he inherits. Pat Brown's legacy to Reagan was a state budget deficit of $194 million. This was the result of eight years in which state spending soared from $2.14 billion a year to $4.65 billion. In the same period, the number of full-time civil service employees jumped from 70,000 to 102,000.

Arriving in the state capital to take his first and only elective public office, Reagan had no veteran advisers on whom to rely. Recalls Lyn Nofziger, Reagan's press secretary at the time: "His campaign was run by hired people who then walked away and left it. When he was elected, the big question was, 'My God, what do we do now?' "

What Reagan did often ran contrary to his campaign oratory. Instead of cutting taxes, he solved the budget deficit with the largest tax increase in California's history: a $1 billion jolt, and that was only the beginning. By the time he left office eight years later, he had added $21 billion to the state's tax revenues. Under Reagan, the state's income tax rose from a maximum of 7% to 11% for individuals, and from 5.5% to 9% for corporations. He also increased the state sales tax from 4% to 6%. Facing a state legislature dominated by Democrats in six of his eight years as Governor, he repeatedly opposed legislative proposals to institute the withholding of state income tax from paychecks. Said Reagan in 1969: "The only way I would support withholding is if they held a burning blowtorch to my feet." No one did, but Reagan nonetheless changed his mind and in 1971 signed a tax withholding law.

The Reagan tax increases helped set the stage for California's emotional Proposition 13 tax revolt in 1978, three years after he left office. As Governor he avoided taxpayer retaliation by turning to a politically popular gimmick. As budget surpluses grew because of his high taxes and the state's general prosperity, Reagan retained the heavy taxation but gave some of the unneeded revenues back to Californians as rebates and tax credits. The income tax rebate in 1970 was $91 million; a 20% income tax credit in 1972 totaled some $235 million; another rebate in 1973 added up to $405 million. Even with the rebates, the high tax revenues permitted Reagan to leave office with a budget surplus of $554 million. Complains John Schmitz, a conservative Republican state senator who had been dismayed by many of Reagan's fiscal policies: "He didn't do any slashing here. We didn't need all that money."

Reagan did no better than Pat Brown in holding down state spending; he let it more than double, from $4.65 billion a year to $10.27 billion. And while he sharply curtailed the increase in full-time state employees, he did not cut the total.

Reagan's rhetoric was more right wing than his record on many other issues. He talked tough about combating crime, re-established capital punishment and stiffened sentences for rape, robbery and burglary. But the state's prison population declined during his first five years in office, from 27,000 inmates to 19,000, primarily because of a more lenient parole policy; when he left office, the state had 24,000 people in its prisons.

His 1971 welfare changes effectively cut the number of recipients by some 400,000, while actually increasing the benefits for those needing help the most. A mother with three children, for example, had her monthly welfare check increased from $176 to $311. Reagan now boasts of this cutback in the rolls, but he does not mention that the number had grown by 1.1 million during his first four years in office. One of his ways to get freeloaders off welfare was to require some recipients to work part time, without pay, on community improvement projects.

On another social issue, Reagan was far from conservative as Governor: he signed one of the most liberal state abortion laws in the nation at the time. As a result, the number of reported abortions in California rose from 518 in 1967 to more than 600,000 between 1968 and 1974 --some 200,000 of them financed from public funds. Reagan now generally opposes publicly funded abortions. On another sensitive issue still dividing conservatives and liberals, Reagan in Sacramento took the liberal side: he strongly supported the Equal Rights Amendment, which the California legislature ratified in 1972. He now opposes the amendment.

Reagan gained national attention as Governor by insisting that the University of California get tough with anti-Viet Nam War protesters. One of his first moves was to persuade the university's board of regents to fire President Clark Kerr, who had helped build what was generally regarded as the nation's best state system of public universities but had not stopped the radicals from disrupting campus life. Reagan also succeeded in imposing the university's first tuition charge ($50 a quarter) "so that those there to agitate and not study might think twice before they pay." Reagan contended that "the State of California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity." Many professors retorted that this is precisely what a university is supposed to do.

Typically, Reagan did not push this quarrel to its practical conclusion. Instead of making good on his threat to cut back state support of the university system, he permitted its annual budget to grow from $240 million to $509 million in eight years. He approved a 190% increase in state support of California's public colleges and hiked state aid to local schools by 119%. Many California educators now rate Reagan's successor, Jerry Brown, as more tightfisted and tougher to deal with than Reagan.

Another liberal group surprised by Reagan's policies was California's environmentalists. Reagan had protested that "there seems to be an organized, well-financed lobby that is determined to preserve the natural habitat and comfort of every species except man." But he established an air-resources board and gave it ample power to enforce stiff antipollution standards. He signed smog control laws more stringent than federal requirements. His rigid water pollution controls angered leaders of industry. He set aside an additional 145,000 acres of park lands, including 41 miles of expensive ocean front. He blocked a reservoir that would have submerged the ancestral burial grounds of several Indian tribes. On balance, even liberal groups like Americans for Democratic Action were not displeased with most of Governor Reagan's policies. Says Shirley Wechsler of Los Angeles, national vice president of A.D.A.: "We got a better hearing from Reagan--and a better deal--than we get from Jerry Brown."

Reagan did feud with the Democratic legislators. He vetoed 994 bills--and made his vetoes stick; only one was overridden. Yet on many other issues, he first fought for conservative principles and then, when faced with deadlock or defeat, agreed to compromise. Recalls Willie Brown, an influential Democratic assemblyman from San Francisco: "He showed a willingness to accept collective decisions without serious ego problems. He does not measure his self-worth by whether an idea is his or not."

One of Reagan's strengths as Governor was his ability to assemble a staff of experienced advisers and department heads and to delegate considerable authority to them. He embraced an aide's scheme of "mini-memos," four-paragraph briefs setting out l) the nature of a problem, 2) the basic facts involved, 3) terse arguments for and against various options, and 4) the staff recommendation on what to do. At the bottom were boxes for Reagan to check yes or no. While critics claimed that this showed Reagan's inability or unwillingness to grapple with complex issues, the procedure did speed up decisions.

The mini-memos also helped Reagan avoid one of his weaknesses as Governor: his tendency to become bored when issues lingered too long. Indeed, while he worked hard at his job during business hours, he normally left for home promptly at 6 p.m. He would often join Wife Nancy for a vodka collins or vodka-and-tonic at their Sacramento home. After a shower, Reagan would usually change into pajamas, eat dinner, and then watch such favorite TV programs as Bonanza and Mission: Impossible. Nancy insisted that he get a full night's sleep; he normally retired by 10 p.m.

While Reagan was totally relaxed offstage, he could fire up Californians when he took his arguments directly to the people via television, as he often did. Still, many of the decisions Governors must make are controversial and create enemies. While in office, Reagan won from Californians an approval rating that ranged from a low of 28% to a high of 42%. Earlier this month the California poll asked state residents to look back and rate Reagan's stewardship in Sacramento once again. Filtered through five-year-old memories, a majority (51%) now give Reagan high marks for the way he governed the state. qed

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