A Alan Post

Gov. George Deukmejian's performance as the iron-fisted manager of state finances came in for fresh reviews Wednesday as aftershocks from the heavily retrenched new state budget rippled through California. "George Deukmejian has put California's future on hold," said Democratic Senate leader David A. Roberti, who has both devised compromises and jousted sharply with the Republican governor over the past 7 1/2 years. But maverick GOP Sen.

First, a disclaimer. The state budget can be complicated, baffling even to the lawmakers and bureaucrats who deal daily with it. Also, I'll never be mistaken for A. Alan Post or any other fiscal wizard. All I know about my own checking account is what the ATM tells me. All that aside, let me explore one facet of the budget process I find curious. By now, everybody knows about the state's fiscal crisis. IOUs and an $11-billion shortfall have made California a laughingstock.

SACRAMENTO Think there are no taxpayer bargains in Sacramento? Here's one and it's a steal: the $5.5 million we shell out to operate the office of Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill. The Budget Nun, she's called, because her fiscal reports are incorruptible. They're the bible. The one source of truth. At minimum, legislators and taxpayers can be confident Hill's numbers are not cooked in a roily pot of political partisanship. She's the most influential non-elected official in the Capitol.

Wander through the Capitol and there is surprisingly little sense of crisis here. The soothing drone of clerks reading off bills can be heard in the Assembly and the Senate. Angry citizens are not filling the galleries. No one's staging a sit-in at the governor's office. Large crowds are not gathering outside the west entrance to give voice to protest. The state may be entering its 27th day without a budget, but calm prevails.

California officials Wednesday began the task of doing something that has never been done before in the state--restoring a government program whose funding has been abolished by the governor. On Tuesday, the state's electorate by a margin of 54% to 46% approved Proposition 97, which requires Gov. George Deukmejian to restore funding for Cal/OSHA, the state's private sector worker safety and health program. A.

Despite angry protests by a long parade of public witnesses, a voter-approved salary commission Friday unanimously granted substantial pay raises to statewide elected officials and all members of the Legislature. The governor's annual salary will rise from $102,000 to $120,000. Legislators will receive an increase from $40,816 to $52,500--a 28.6% jump. Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) and Senate President Pro Tem David A.

When a much-touted state commission recently stated that California's beleaguered community college system could find financial salvation by going high-tech and business lean, Martin Hittelman's response was to scoff. A faculty union leader and math instructor at Valley College in Van Nuys, Hittelman described an episode when he taught at Harbor College in Wilmington some years ago.

A student of history and practitioner of hyperbole, Republican firebrand Tom McClintock is fond of quoting Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" when describing the current state of California. Once-gleaming roads and aqueducts lie in ruins. Once-proud universities deteriorate from neglect. The slide, the Northridge assemblyman said, came after California's last visionary governor left Sacramento.

After more than a decade of shying away from Proposition 13--the precedent-setting 1978 initiative that slashed California property taxes in half--the state Legislature is beginning to examine some of the problems it has spawned. Both a special Senate commission and an Assembly select committee recently began to take a look at some of the consequences of Proposition 13, including these: * Wide differences in tax assessments on similar properties in the same neighborhood.

To taxpayers, it must seem that California went to bed one night and woke up the next morning facing a $12.6-billion state budget deficit. The fact is, it took years--and a lot of procrastination and political games--to bring the state to a point where a new Republican governor felt compelled to propose $6.7 billion in higher taxes to bail out a $56-billion state budget that is drowning in red ink.