Wilson Agrees to Offer Plan to Cut Budget : Finances: The governor cancels meetings with Democrats after they call on him to reveal proposal to erase deficit without new taxes. The move ensures the deliberations will become contentious.

SACRAMENTO — Reacting to criticism from Democratic leaders, Gov. Pete Wilson on Wednesday canceled further meetings with the legislative leadership and agreed to produce a Republican plan by next week to erase the state’s deficit in one year without raising taxes.

The move all but ensured that the state’s budget deliberations would shift from the cordial to the contentious, from a series of closed-door sessions to an open clash of values on the floors of the Assembly and Senate.

The Republican chief executive made the break after the Democratic leaders--Assembly Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco and Senate Leader David A. Roberti of Van Nuys--broke an informal nonaggression pact by criticizing Wilson for refusing to go public with his own plan to balance the budget.

Brown told reporters that Wilson, in the private meetings, has demanded that state spending be brought down from $44 billion this year to $38 billion in the fiscal year that begins July 1--but refused to say how he would do it.

“You’ve got to put on the table how you would spend the $38 billion--which then demonstrates whose throat you’re cutting,” Brown said. “Do you eliminate (aid to) the blind, the disabled, the old people? Do you knock out Medi-Cal? What do you do to get it down to $38 billion? That’s obviously a mystery that has not been resolved by this governor.”

Roberti challenged Wilson to respond to a Democratic plan that would protect public schools from further cuts while reducing aid to the poor, aged, blind, disabled and renters, among other traditionally Democratic constituents.

Roberti’s plan, which aides are revising in hopes of making it a proposal that Democrats in the Senate and Assembly can support, would extend for at least a year a half-cent sales tax that is supposed to expire in 1993 and limit some tax deductions for business and the wealthy.

The plan also would end, over a period of years, the state bailout of local government that began after the passage of Proposition 13. And because counties would lose money in the deal, Roberti said he supports repealing a state law that makes them the caretaker of last resort for the sick and the poor.

“Our budget is geared toward protecting the schools--our No. 1 obligation,” Roberti told reporters. “I’m willing to concede an awful lot to protect the schools in the process.”

Roberti and Brown said they intended to refine the plan and will schedule a series of votes on the floor of both houses next week. They said the votes would make it clear whether Republicans wanted to cut education.

“At some point, somebody’s got to say you can’t do it all,” Roberti said. “We’re waiting. They don’t want to tell the world, including their own constituencies, that they’re cutting back on the schools. At some point you’ve got to tell the world that you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

Wilson’s top spokesman, Communications Director Dan Schnur, said the Democrats’ comments persuaded the governor that further meetings would be unproductive.

“There was a mutual agreement that a mutual solution would be arrived at through these meetings,” Schnur said. “The Democrats have decided that’s not their preferred option anymore. We have asked Republicans to prepare a proposal of their own.”

Schnur and Assembly Republican Leader Bill Jones of Fresno said the Republican plan would erase the state’s anticipated $3.8-billion deficit in a single year--without raising taxes.

“We’ve made it very clear that our bottom line is no tax increases and no deficit spending,” Jones said.

Schnur said the Republican plan would not include a proposal, first put forward by Brown, to loan the schools up to $2.3 billion, which they could repay in a future fiscal year from money they are supposed to receive from the state.

“The governor is opposed to rolling over the deficit,” Schnur said.

Neither Jones nor Schnur would say if the Republicans favor cutting $2.3 billion from the $18 billion-plus for schools that Wilson proposed in January. That cut is the maximum the Legislature could adopt without suspending Proposition 98, the voter-approved constitutional provision that sets guidelines for school funding.

When Wilson does present a plan in public, Roberti admitted, the Democrats probably will criticize it.

“That’s negotiations,” he said. “You present your initial positions and try to work from there.”