All this week on The California Report, we’re taking an in-depth look at some of the governor’s most ambitious proposals to reform the budget process. To listen to any segment of the series, you can check our website (updated after the program airs across the state).

On Monday’s newscast, I examined the proposal to reform Proposition 98. It’s an interesting concept, and one that would seem to be everything education advocates could hope for: no more suspensions of Prop 98, and no more “alternate” formulas for effect of inflation. The latter proposal means no more years where the the Prop 98 funding guaranteeis temporarily lowered, only to be restored some time in the future. The reforms are, by all accounts, a major new firewall around what amounts to some 43% of the state’s General Fund.

But the education sources I’ve spoken to say they can’t extract the governor’s rosy plan to protect future K-14 spending from what they see as a flawed plan to break future budget logjams. That proposal, which was the focus of my reporting this morning, calls for across-the-board spending cuts if future budget deficits aren’t erased by lawmakers in a timely fashion.

Even the Legislature’s most consistent fiscal conservative, Senator Tom McClintock, is a critic of what’s known as the governor’s Spending Control Proposal. He favors, instead, reforming the budget process by giving the governor the power to make mid-year budget cuts on his own, a power that was stripped in 1983. McClintock has introduced his own constitutional amendment, that would trade mid-year spending cuts for lowering the threshold for a budget vote to a simple majority. He is not, however, suggesting any change in the two-thirds vote required to increase taxes.

On Wednesday, reporter Kathy McAnally takes a look at the headaches California commuters face in light of the governor’s plan to eventually restore transportation funding. And on Thursday, reporter Cyrus Musiker examines the governor’s call for a reform to the embattled pension system of state workers. Host Scott Shafer will wrap up the week with a discussion segment on the impact of ballot box budgeting.