California Governor's Proposed Tax Relief for Teachers Criticized.

Byline: Lynda Gorov

May 16--LOS ANGELES - The gesture caught everyone off guard - the governor's friends and foes alike.

Over the weekend, California Governor Gray Davis unveiled a plan that calls for credentialed public school teachers to pay no state income taxes on their salaries. By yesterday, some police officers, nurses, and other professionals who consider themselves overworked and underpaid were wondering where the call for their tax relief was.

Even some educators, while lauding the gesture, dismissed the governor's proposal as fiscally unfeasible, not to mention adding too little money in teachers' pockets. Davis's Republican opponents were openly derisive. Democrats hardly sounded more supportive of making public school teachers the first and only group to enjoy such an exemption in California and perhaps the nation.

The plan, said Assembly Republican Leader Scott Baugh, "smacks of special-interest politics." Senate President pro tem John Burton, a Democrat, said it was a "laudatory goal that was fraught with peril." Others called it divisive and discriminatory. No one said they expected it to fly in either house in Sacramento.

"It's a great gesture," said Barbara Kerr, statewide vice president of the California Teachers Union. "It's one of the most exciting and creative things I've seen in forever. That said, I think what we'll end up doing is working something out that is more satisfactory to everyone."

Under the plan, an experienced teacher earning $50,000 a year would save $1,350 in state income taxes. A starting teacher paid $32,000 would save $500. Other public school employees with credentialed teaching licenses, whether in the classroom or an administrator's office, would also be eligible to exempt their salaries from state income taxes. The tax break does not apply to money earned outside the schools, or to noncredentialed public school teachers.