The Governor's May Revision
Meanwhile, as the disagreements among the parties in the field were playing out, competing bills were being introduced in the Legislature on how to implement Proposition 99. The Senate Health Committee considered two bills on April 17, the day after the media stories broke about the memo calling Wilson “pro-tobacco,” and both were passed out of committee, including one sponsored by Senator Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) requiring full funding. The Assembly Health Committee passed a full-funding bill sponsored by Assembly Member Katz on April 23 by a 12-1 vote. (After the hearing, several other members signed on to the bill, resulting in a 15-1 vote in favor of the bill.) McNeil believed press coverage of the issue the day before in the Los Angeles Times played an important role in convincing the chair to let the bill out of committee. The Times reported that the chair of the Assembly Health Committee, Bret Granlund (R-Yucaipa), who had been quoted as saying, “I'm a free enterprise, no-tax smoker,”had taken at least $44,500 in tobacco industry campaign contributions.[40] According to McNeil,
There was heavy-duty, behind-the-scenes lobbying with the CMA and the chairman of that committee to get that bill moved out. Ten minutes before the bill was heard, I was out in the hallway with the Assemblymen Katz and Brett Granlund, the chair. …he was getting some bad press in the L.A. Times at the time, which really helped. And I just said, “Well, look, this is going to go through the budget process and you're going to look terrible for not allowing this issue to move through the process and holding it up, and it's got a long ways to go and you're going to be criticized and seen as pro-tobacco, and there's no reason to do that.”…So he agreed to let it out of committee. He had to signal that to the rest of his caucus to get it out because otherwise that bill was not going to come out.[27]
Under such scrutiny, the Assembly Health Committee was unwilling to vote publicly against Proposition 99's Health Education and Research programs. The bill later, however, stalled in the Assembly Appropriations Committee and died without a vote.
The Assembly Appropriations Committee passed the governor's proposal contained in his May revision of the budget. (The May revision is considered the governor's “real” budget because it is adjusted to reflect new economic data.) In the May revision, Wilson proposed releasing $147 million in reserve Proposition 99 funds, including $33 million in the Health Education Account and $41 million in the Research Account, with the rest for medical services. The funds were available due to higher-than-expected revenues (because tobacco use was no longer falling, partially as a result of cuts in the anti-tobacco program) and underspending in several Proposition 99 medical programs, including ones illegally funded out of the Health Education Account. The additional $74 million in spending on Health Education and Research was to be a one-time expenditure. The governor was still not willing to allocate all of the Proposition 99 money as specified in the initiative. All of the new monies were to target youth, which was justified by the release of data showing that in 1995 adult smoking prevalence had dropped from 17.3 percent to 16.7 percent while youth smoking prevalence had risen again, this time from 10.9 percent to 11.9 percent.[41]