The campaign finance reports released late Monday are chock full of information about how ballot measure committees spend their cash. And so far this year, it's been a banner season for signature gatherers, consultants, and pollsters.

True, it's no real surprise that the interest groups readying themselves for a possible November special election would have focused on these three essential categories. But what the documents really reinforce is how lucrative the mechanics of campaigning have become in California politics.

First up: the Schwarzenegger allies Citizens To Save California, who reported total contributions between January 1 and March 31 of almost $8.3 million. Some quick work on the calculator shows that of that amount, CSC reports spending some $3.3 million on petition circulation and a little more than $2.3 million on political consultants. The committee also spent about $430,000 on polling.

Now to the other side, the Alliance For A Better California, which is the current political arm of labor unions, Democrats, and others fighting the governor's proposals. Much of their money for the reporting period (which totaled, by the way, about $3.4 million) was spent on the same activities, but in different amounts. ABC reportedly spent more on polling ($1.27 million) and less on political consultants ($194,750) than the Schwarzenegger allies. They also appear to have spent about half as much on signature gathering, with a total of about $1.6 million.

By the way, most of the signature gathering payments on both sides went to large companies around the state and nation that specialize in this kind of work. But there were also individuals paid out by the committees collecting signatures-- checks that were sometimes in the six figures... for less than 3 months of work.