Government Spending

After weeks of resistance, Russia's Communist-dominated parliament finally passed the 1997 draft budget at its initial reading Sunday, having first forced the cash-strapped government to rewrite it to include $6 billion in extra spending. Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin won the battle over the budget when, after a private talk with Communist leader Gennady A. Zyuganov, the latter told his followers to vote in favor of the draft--at least for the moment.

The California Senate easily approved a new $63-billion state budget Sunday night, sending the spending plan with its corporate tax cut and major boost for public schools to the more partisan Assembly, where a vote was not expected until today. The Senate approved the budget by a 32-5 vote, five more than the required two-thirds majority.

Two years ago, when Michael Patrick Flanagan was campaigning to unseat House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, the upstart Illinois Republican derided Rostenkowski's ability to deliver public works projects, housing subsidies and other federal goodies for Chicago. Flanagan practically bragged that he would bring home less federal largess. "Pork," he declared, "has not served this district well."

German Finance Minister Theo Waigel on Wednesday imposed a spending freeze aimed at getting the federal government's 1996 deficit back on target. The freeze, which goes into effect Friday, will mean spending cuts in some areas because "extra spending" will probably be needed to meet the cost of high jobless levels, Waigel told the Bundestag, or the lower house of Parliament. The overall size of the cuts won't be clear until the next tax estimate in mid-May, Waigel said.

Despite a much-publicized reorganization effort, the state has made little progress in resolving the management problems that caused it to waste millions of dollars on poorly designed computer systems, a legislative watchdog reported Tuesday.

Bills for the expenses of City Council members and the city manager when they attend out-of-town conferences will get closer scrutiny from now on before they are reimbursed. The new policy, approved Monday night, requires expenses to be itemized and then approved by the council. Councilman Tom Carroll was the only dissenter in the 4-1 vote. He said the new policy amounts to nit-picking. "If we want to 'flyspeck' on how much some people spend, I think it's a bunch of nonsense," Carroll said.

Los Angeles city officials got another dose of bad fiscal news Tuesday: word of a growing deficit--pegged at $50 million--in this year's budget. City finance officials assured the council's Budget and Finance Committee that the gap in the $3.9-billion spending plan can be closed before the June 30 end of the 1995-96 fiscal year by delaying some projects and dipping into reserve funds.

Under Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, travel expenses for the secretary's office have risen at least 145% over those of a well-traveled GOP predecessor, while many of Brown's aides are improperly using government credit cards for personal purchases, according to a confidential audit report obtained by The Times.

Now that it's joined the age of computers and portable phones, our local government still has to figure out how to control the costs of the technological revolution. Cellular phones are an example. Last week, Times reporter Jeff Brazil revealed about $3 million in bills from 3,400 Los Angeles city- and county-owned cellular phones in the last fiscal year. City and county cell phone bills here--averaging $242,000 a month--are much higher than in other cities.

In the battle over the federal budget that is still paralyzing Washington as the election year begins are the sounds of one political era ending and a new one beginning. From one angle, the debate marks the end of the century-long trend toward more central authority and power in Washington.