Nonetheless, a couple of interesting points have come up in the past 24 hours... today from the state's preeminent pollsters and yesterday in my interview with Governor Schwarzenegger.

All but one of the six measures placed before the voters by the Legislature in a special election got creamed (and the one that passed wasn't much in the way of budget reform/fix). So what happened?

At today's monthly luncheon of the Sacramento Press Club, pollsters Mark Baldassare and Mark DiCamillo offered their own assessment of the election results. And they don't see those results the way that the governor does -- namely, as a repudiation of tax increases.

Baldassare, who heads up the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, said the results "don't reflect the will of the people." And DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, called the small number of voters who cast ballots a "skewed sample" that was "unrepresentative" of Californians... or even Californians who show up to vote for normal elections.

DiCamillo went one step further, saying that he believes the typical voter on May 19 was older (55 or older), no kids, and male. And add to that... angry, especially about that $16 billion tax increase linked to Proposition 1A.

"Once voters turned against Prop 1A," DiCamillo told the press club luncheon, "they turned against the rest of the measures en masse."

So it begs the question: why would Schwarzenegger, who has wanted a spending limit like Prop 1A (or stronger) ever since he won the 2003 recall election... tack it to a huge tax hike, something he also staked out opposition to for his entire political career?

"It was not my idea to link those two together," said Schwarzenegger. "We always had concerns that it could be misconstrued."

That's about as far as the governor was willing to go down Contemplation Highway; from there, he rejected any notion that his last, best chance for a spending limitation has passed by... drawing in the new NBA champions into his world of eternal optimism.

The audio from that part of the interview is below.

Smart politicos know why Prop 1A went down the way it did: a complicated deal to keep both labor unions and conservatives (ostensibly) bound together on the issue of spending limits and new revenues.

Still, pollster Mark DiCamillo believes that based on both Field's and PPIC's polling over recent times, all taxes are not equal to voters. "Voters are more likely to tolerate targeted taxes," he said today. Of course, those tax hikes -- on things like alcohol, tobacco, and pornography -- may not bring in enough cash to make a substantive change.

And both pollsters had some advice for legislators, who are wrapping up budget conference committee work this afternoon: a spoonful of sugar with the medicine might help, if they're thinking taxes. Baldassare and DiCamillo said that some government reforms... and attempts to ferret out even a small amount of waste that becomes "symbolic"... might send a message to the voters that the Legislature is trying.

In this week's Capital Notes Podcast, we examine the results and the messages of the voters rejecting all of the budget-balancing proposals on Tuesday. As Capitol Weekly's Anthony York and I discuss, finding any single message seems... well... impossible.

We also examine this week's dire budget news, including new projections of the deficit and the governor's call for more spending cuts.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested dusting off the script of a movie he wasn't in today, Back To The Future, in telling reporters that the state budget should match its anemic revenues -- now about where they were a decade ago.

"We have to do drastic measures," said the governor. "And we have to recognize that we have to dial back to what was happening in 1999."

He then went on to talk about eliminating programs that have been created, or that have grown, since the year Napster debuted and Boris Yeltsin resigned.

You can hear the full remark by clicking below.

So let's take the governor up on his idea and dust off the state's official expenditures in 1999.

The excercise is slightly complicated by the fact that the calendar year actually is split into two fiscal years (1998-1999 and 1999-2000). Let's be generous and use the latter, seeing as its revenues -- according to official data compiled by the office of the state controller -- were $71.5 billion. The governor said he believes that most of the current deficit is in the year that begins July 1, which would mean revenues might, in fact, be around $70 billion. So we've got a reasonable match.

So what did California spend its 1999 bucks on?

The record shows general fund expenses of $66.1 billion. Below are some key government services with 1999 spending levels first... and the governor's May revised budget for 2009-10 second.

K-12 Education
Then -- $26.3 billion / Now -- $36.6 billion
Corrections -- $4.4 billion / Now -- $9.6 billion
Higher Education -- $7.7 billion / Now -- $11 billion

[Note: some of the numbers above are estimates pieced together with the February budget and the list of May spending reductions, as documents released to the press were thin on details]

At first blush, it would look like 1999 spending would mean severe cuts. But it's only fair to determine the effect of inflation (how much money you'd need now to buy what in 1999 cost $1, for example).

Using an online calculator shows that the above 1999 figure for K-12 education spending in the general fund -- $26.3 billion -- would now translate into $33.7 billion. That would be a $3 billion reduction in public school funding beyond what Schwarzenegger proposed last week. Corrections, accounting for inflation, would be $5.6 billion -- a $4 billion cut from what the guv is currently endorsing.

Perhaps the governor was just using the final year of the 1990s in broad, comparative purposes of revenues. Fair enough. But when you start looking at expenses, that kind of "dial back" would be radical, at least in Capitol circles.

In the wake of yesterday's all-budget special election, a former candidate for the Legislature has formally filed an initiative to knock the California Legislature back to part-time status, more than four decades after it became a year-round affair.

"A full-time Legislature has failed the people of California," said proponent Gabriella Holt in a written statment. Holt, who lost a race for the Assembly from the Long Beach area last fall, filed the proposal today.

Such a filing doesn't mean much on its own; after a title and summary are prepared by the Attorney General, Holt would then have 150 days to collect 694,354 valid signatures.

The initiative calls for a 90 day legislative session each year -- 30 days beginning in January, and 60 days beginning in May. It would allow an additional five days for legislative sessions to reconsider any gubernatorial vetoes. It would take effect in December 2012.

It was 1966 when voters enacted Proposition 1A (ah, the numbers never change, do they?) to create the full-time Legislature, led by legendary Assembly speaker Jesse Unruh. Unruh said that the existing system back then had become difficult, comparing the work of the state to the complexity of special sessions and the like called to handle that work.

Holt is a Republican, but spokesperson Tom Kise says she's looking to enlist Democrats in the cause, too.

It's not surprising to see this initiative make its way into the system, given the sense that voters were angry yesterday for being asked to do the job of governing. And it comes on the same day others formally began a drive for a constitutional convention.

A lot would have to happen to make the part-time Legislature a reality... of course, similar hurdles existed in 2003, when voter anger plus a wad of cash to collect signatures led to one of the most poignant chapters in the state's political history.

The voters have spoken. And their very loud answer on the five budget-related ballot measures with real impact: no.

There's a risk in playing crime scene investigator before the smoke has fully cleared. Still, it's hard to deny some of the more obvious reasons for Tuesday's train wreck, things that most everyone in California politics has been talking about for weeks...

* A Fatal Case of 'Insider-Itis': The simple truth is that the package of budget proposals now in the dustbin was shaped more by raw politics than reasoned public policy. Or to paraphrase an oldie but a goodie, they didn't play in Pomona (or Pismo Beach... or Portola...) the way that they did under the Capitol dome in late February.

A $16 billion tax increase linked to a spending limit? Sure, that might have been the only way to get the bare minimum of GOP legislators to sign on to the pledge-busting tax hike... while similarly forcing Dems to accept a spending formula they probably hated. Linking the spending limit proposal to a $9 billion proposal to spend more money on education? True, that helped bring the powerful California Teachers Association on board to support both measures, and they were the major power behind the defeat of Governor Schwarzenegger's last budget reform attempt. Borrow money from the California Lottery? Hey, easier that finding the political will for another $5 billion in less risky solutions.

But in the end, the package of measures never found a core group of supporters. The left may have loved the extra cash for education, but it hated the spending limit. The right might have gone along with most of the package, except for the additional -- and large -- tax hike. Others hated the borrowing, or the raid on child and mental health programs. Outside of political circles, the package didn't make as much sense. And the voters, already sour in the midst of an historic recession, saw no reason to ratify the complicated package.

* No, You Didn't Have To: The final pitch made by the chief executive salesman was that there was no other way to solve the problem than go to the voters. "Any time we change any of those initiatives that have been voted on by the people," Schwarzenegger said on Sunday, "the people have to go back and vote on it again... otherwise, we would be doing all the work just in Sacramento and we wouldn't ask them always to come out and vote for those things."

The guv was right about what's needed to modify most initiatives, but his answer missed a fact that voters understood from the get-go: lawmakers did have other ways to resolve the deficit. While Propositions 1C, 1D, and 1E represented $6 billion of the $40 billion deficit solution enacted in February, they were an end run around the two tools over which legislators and governors have complete control: spending cuts and tax increases. Again, the $16 billion in extra taxes over the next few years (linked to Prop 1A) didn't technically need the electorate's blessing. And in the end, the voters didn't buy the sales pitch that they had to solve the problem.

* Mixed Messages: Political campaigns are best when they have a simple, easy-to-understand message, and unwieldy when that message is a muddled mess. In this campaign, the main alliance in support of all six measures began by selling reform, then pivoted to a warning of disaster, all the while leaving voters to weigh whether the proposals were a short-term fix or a long-term solution. And most vexing: the $6 billion in budget solutions that Schwarzenegger and others began pleading with voters to ratify in the final days weren't even mentioned in the TV ads, which focused on two measures with no short-term fiscal help (and one that actually would cost the state billions). Insiders will no doubt speculate as to why that happened -- maybe the campaign's big donors were most interested in Proposition 1A and Proposition 1B, and not so much in the three that offered up immediate budget cash? Still, it left supporters with a muddled message about why the voters should care: long-term fix? short-term rescue package? stop those crazy politicians? As we know now, that made it easy for voters to just throw their hands up at the whole lot.

* Been There, Done That: Perhaps most challenging for the 'Yes' campaign was the lingering sense among voters, noted by both pollsters and journos who talked to "RPs" (real people), that we'd already fixed the structural budget problem. Part of that perception stems from the strong sales job the governor did in 2004 for passage of the balanced budget amendment, Proposition 58. Maybe too strong.

Consider what he said to a roaring Los Angeles crowd on election night in March 2004 about Prop 58:

Never again can our state spend more money than it takes in. Never again will our politicians deficit finance their spending habits. And never again will our state be driven to the verge of bankruptcy. Never again!

But in most years afterwards, the state budget kept dipping into the red, and the problems continued. Last week, Schwarzenegger admitted as much in a Capitol press conference:

It was not written tight enough. So we have learned from that. It's no different than when we sometimes pass legislation and the next year we come down and we fix the legislation because it was not written exactly the way it was intended to be written.

That's a fair point about the process of government. But the voters aren't legislators; when someone says "never again," they actually believe it. The governor's statement suggests nuance, something that's non-existent when he is on the campaign trail. As Joe Mathews, a former Los Angeles Times reporter who wrote a book chronicling the early Schwarzenegger administration, told me for a story I filed for NPR last week: "This is a man who does not have the soft sell in him. His entire life has been about selling things as big and over-the-top."

* The Voters Can't Solve It: And lastly, this is now the second fizzled special election in four years where voters overwhelmingly took a pass (save for the feel-good Proposition 1F, which appears to have won handily tonight). Maybe it'll finally make it clear that the voters can't solve the state's fiscal chaos. As recent surveys have shown, Californians oppose almost all tax hikes that would bring in a sizeable amount of revenue, while they also bafflingly oppose most substantive spending cuts. And elected officials have never rejected that 'have-it-both-ways' dynamic -- on the contrary, they've embraced it... with Republicans defending one side of the electoral brain, Democrats defending the other. In other words, perhaps the conventional wisdom is wrong; perhaps elected officials aren't unresponsive to the will of the people... perhaps they're too responsive.

Until then, a few odds and ends related to the six proposition extravaganza are worth a mention...

* Tom and Steve. And That's It: There wasn't much news to report out of today's noontime 'debate' between GOP gubernatorial rivals Steve Poizner and Tom Campbell. The two appeared jointly at the monthly luncheon of the Sacramento Press Club to ostensibly talk about their differences of opinion on Proposition 1A, tomorrow's spending limit/reserve fund. Instead, it was more of a 'What I Would Do If I Were Governor' conversation.

The event was a result of Poizner's challenge to both Campbell and potential rival Meg Whitman to debate their proposition positions. Whitman declined, which led Poizner to spend the time since then accusing her of ducking a public discussion. Funny, then, how these little trinkets just happened to be handed out at today's event.

Once inside, attendees watched Poizner, the state's incumbent insurance commissioner, and Campbell, the former congressman/state lawmaker/budget director/business school dean, engage in a wonky hourlong discussion. Campbell used a whiteboard to sketch out some of the numbers in his just announced $15.4 billion deficit solution. Poizner then plopped down two large binders on the table which he said were a full printout of the February budget... asking if anyone even knew what was in it.

From there, it continued to wander away from Prop 1A (Campbell supports it; Poizner opposes it). Poizner came prepared to talk about his hopes to "streamline" state government, and gently jabbed at Governor Schwarzenegger and his now famous pledge to 'blow up' the boxes of bureaucracy. "This is not an action movie," he said.

But Poizner fended off reporter questions about what specifically he would cut, at one point saying it was "distasteful" to talk about cutting government without first using a "process" to identify the best places for cuts.

Campbell also took small jabs at his former boss, though a little more subtly. He said that if state spending had just stayed on course from the era of former guv Gray Davis, the state would be in a much less dire fiscal predicament. And he said governors need to wield the veto pen more forcefully than it's been used in recent decades.

But in the end, there was scant actual news, though some drama when Poizner said that GOP Sen. Abel Maldonado "sold his vote" during the budget process. Campbell said Poizner should retract the comment; Poizner refused.

* Mailing It In: Not that it will probably matter, but Governor Schwarzenegger will not be in the Golden State tomorrow as voters head to the polls. He'll be in Washington, DC. Gubernatorial spokesman Aaron McLear confirms the guv will be back east, with others reporting that the Obama administration is prepared to roll out a federal auto emissions standard that takes its cues from the California law. "It's important for the governor to go to this event," said McLear, who noted that Schwarzenegger will also be meeting with administration and congressional officials to make California's case for some assistance on the issue of budget cuts that might jeopardize federal stimulus dollars. McLear says the governor voted by mail today.

* Tea Time: Speaking of absentee ballots... if what's going on in Solano County is a way of 'reading the tea leaves' on tomorrow's election, it might not be pretty. Elections officials there report that some voters are mailing their ballot backs with tea bags included in the envelopes. Apparently these are folks who are too angry to wait for the next big rally against taxes and government spending. No word how much extra postage it takes to mail back a ballot stuffed with tea bags.

On this week's Capital Notes Podcast, we talk about new deficit projections, what those numbers might mean in terms of budget solutions, and the big budget related election now only four days away.

(And yes, Capitol Weekly's Anthony York and I recorded this podcast just before the governor released his two revised budget plans... blame it on the tight schedule of a late afternoon news conference.)

The question now: will the hole be almost another 50% deeper come Wednesday, after the voters weigh in? For that answer, we'll have to wait.

In order not to repeat a lot of what's being written elsewhere about the proposal(s), let's leave it at the following few tidbits:

* Some perspective: In January 2008, the governor's budget team estimated 2008-09 revenues (that's the year we're still in, which feels like it's gone on forever) at $102.9 billion; the Legislative Analyst's Office was slightly more conservative with $102.3 billion. This afternoon, the administration said the year will actually come in at $85.9 billion. That's $16.4 billion less than the original forecast, and a similar amount below actual 2007-08 revenues.

* In Schwarzenegger's optimistic (a funny word in this context) 'Plan A' scenario laid out today, more than 41 cents of every dollar in deficit solutions is borrowing... a $6 billion revenue anticipation warrant (RAW). These are some of the most expensive loans to the state. When I asked the governor today about the fiscal prudence of a RAW versus some kind of tax increase, he said the following: "To look for new revenues is out of the question. We have to solve this problem this way, which is through some borrowing. These are drastic times and it takes drastic measures to solve those problems."

* Even though he said that, there are new revenues in the proposal(s). Small ones to the state, but perhaps not to those who pay. Case in point: higher fees for the residents of the state's five veterans homes. Total generated for the state: $2.8 million. There are also new fees being proposed at some state parks.

* Proposals to sell off stuff always get headlines, but aren't so easy to make happen in a short amount of time. And putting a dollar value on them can be risky. Case in point: the governor's plan a while back to sell EdFund, the state's student loan guarantee fund. It was projected to bring in $1 billion, but still hasn't been sold (and was last valued at 50% of its original estimate). I mention that because in this proposal, the governor suggests $1 billion for selling off part of the State Compensation Insurance Fund. Maybe it's an easier deal than EdFund (and others in the past), but...

* Another one that would seem hard to give a dollar value until you start doing it... is fraud detection. The revised budget pencils in $47.9 million for rooting out fraud in Medi-Cal (saying it'll actually save almost twice that in years to come), and $15.8 million of fraud in the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program. No one would quibble with the goal; one wonders, though, whether the savings estimates are reasonable or high.

There's much more to examine in this proposal. But perhaps Capitol denizens should take a breath or two, and see what the voters do on Tuesday. Until then, we won't know the exact size of the hole... and what options are really going to be in the mix.

So now, we wait...

So here's an attempted laymen's explanation of what Lockyer is proposing:

The state needs to borrow money from Wall Street investors. But given the state's lousy fiscal reputation and the size of the loan needed, investors will demand what are called "credit enhancements," which essentially means guarantees from banks to pay off the state's balance to investors if the worst happens. But in this jittery credit climate, banks might not agree to give the state these credit enhancements... unless, that is, the feds tell the banks that they will step in and pay off the tab should California really go belly up.

Phew.

"The current credit crisis," says Lockyer in his letter, "makes it highly unlikely that the state can induce the banks to provide the required credit support... without further protection for the banks."

To nudge the banks into helping California, Lockyer proposes that the Treasury Department agree to use TARP funds to cover the banks' losses on the deal... but "only in the event of [a state government] default," says Lockyer.

A spokesman for Lockyer says the value of the "credit enhancements" is enormous to California taxpayers: without them, a $15 billion short-term loan could cost the state as much as an additional $1 billion in interest. The backing of the deal by banks makes the total cost to the state more doable.

Bottom line: today's announcement makes it clear that the state's cash flow crunch couldn't have come at a much worse time... and that while default is very unlikely, California nonetheless needs the feds to effectively say, 'Don't worrry, I've got your back.'

Prop 1F was the focus of this morning's final look at the May 19 special election on The California Report.

This proposal is the only one that seems like a sure bet next Tuesday, and with good reason: it prevents legislators and statewide elected officials from receiving salary increases in years when the state's projected to run in the red.

It's also one of those measures that voters are likely to interpret as more substantive than it really is.

For starters, it's going to come as a surprise to some Californians that the pols don't control their own salaries. Of course, those same folks are ones who've forgotten 1990's Proposition 112, which created a citizens commission that sets those pay levels.

The California Citizens Compensation Commission usually meets once a year, considers a variety of rather bland factors, and makes its decision. In the last 15 years, the commission has raised the salary of legislators seven times; only three of those pay hikes were in the last decade.

But those were three pretty bad years for the state budget -- 2005-06, 2006-07, and 2007-08. The current annual pay for rank and file legislators is $116,028 -- the highest in the nation (#2: Michigan, at $79,650).

For constitutional officers, there were also three pay hikes in the last decade (though only in two of the same years as the Legislature). The governor is the top earner, at $212,179 (Arnold Schwarzenegger, though, accepts no salary).

What Prop 1F is effectively doing, then, is removing a power from the citizens commissioners that's only been used 30% of the time in recent history. That's not necessarily a bad thing to change... but it's a much more muted action than angry voters probably want.

In fact, what voters probably would love is to slash the pay of lawmakers. And here's where Prop 1F will do absolutely nada. While the citizens commission can cut politician pay, it can't cut the pay of sitting lawmakers... only the salary for those who take office in the next election.

For that, you can thank... wait for it... a different voter approved ballot measure, 1972's Proposition 6, which prohibits the reduction of salary during a pol's term in office.

The salary commission is scheduled to meet next week -- the day after the election -- to consider a 10% pay cut. But again, that will only apply to those elected in November 2010. Those in office now can't be forced to take a reduction, no matter how bad the state's finances may be.

(In fairness, it should be noted that eight senators and 15 assemblymembers have either declined the 2007 pay raise or cut their salary beyond the 2006 level, which was $113,098.)

The author of Prop 1F, Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria), says it's only a first step in government reform.

"I believe [lawmakers] get paid fairly for what they do," he says. "But I don't think that we ought to be any different than anybody else."

You may remember that Prop 1F was one of Maldo's demands in February for being the decisive vote for the budget deficit deal. His original demand -- a measure to block legislators from being paid when they miss the annual budget deadline -- was deemed illegal by legal advisers.

Prop 1F will have an impact, though probably not at the level the angry electorate wants. And while the guillotine metaphor may be a bit extreme, a lot of folks involved in state politics believe that the voters are just itching for a way to punish politicians -- especially the Legislature.

This may scratch that itch for the time being. But if the state's fiscal woes, and political gridlock, continue, the modern-day version of the execution device could come rolling out. And the odds on favorite for the shape it would take: a part-time Legislature.