Phew.

Billable Hours: While there was a lot of drama over the big deadline for some interesting legislation on Tuesday, it was also a little overwrought. After all, these were merely bills left over from 2011 -- 2012 bills are still being introduced at a healthy clip -- and even then, pet projects in the Legislature have a way of reemerging in the final hours of a two year session, which will be coming up on August 31.

And yet, there were some intense moments over the last two days. Tops on that list certainly has to be the seemingly-all-but-dead AB 327, the bill seeking to modify the three strikes sentencing law. Assemblyman Mike Davis (D-LA) saw his bill come up short on Monday, only to ask for reconsideration (a do-over in less technical terms) on Tuesday.

After the day before's long and impassioned debate, a number of assemblymembers rose Tuesday to say the bill didn't need to be rehashed, only to then... yes... rehash it. Democrats largely argued the original 1994 initiative counts too many less-than-serious crimes as a "strike," while Republicans countered that the law generally works as it is. AB 327 would place the amendment on the November 2014 ballot; a similar change to the three strikes law may be on this fall's ballot, and so if it ultimately clears the state Capitol AB 327 may be more of a backstop if the 2012 initiative either fails to make the ballot or is rejected by voters.

AB 327's first call today, like Monday, came up short of the 41 votes needed for passage. Then, after some discussion, one Democrat changed his 'no' to an 'aye' -- Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Montebello) -- while three Dem assemblymembers who had taken a pass on voting cast a vote for passage: Alyson Huber (D-El Dorado Hills), Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), and Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia).

Meantime, a 2011 bill that did not get a do-over after an earlier defeat was SB 810, the single-payer health care bill carried by Sen. Mark Leno (D-SF). A handful of skeptical Democrats failed to give it the needed 21 votes, thus killing the hopes of many universal health care advocates to get the bill in front of Governor Jerry Brown, after it was vetoed twice by Governor Arnold Schwarznegger. A blogger on the liberal Daily Kos website Tuesday morning called the Dems "gutless" for not signing on to SB 810.

Also dying by day's end... after failing to get a supermajority vote... AB 1148, a bill to add new campaign disclosure rules by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica). The bill would have required more prominent disclosure of big donors in TV ads, updated info on those donors on a campaign's website, and notations in California's well-known slate mailers of which candidates or campaigns had paid to be included in the list of "endorsed" campaigns. AB 1148 also would have broadened the disclosure rules out to independent expenditure committees.

A supermajority vote also eluded a Senate bill to keep affordable housing projects alive in the aftermath of abolishing redevelopment, though Senate Democrats removed the urgency language, presented it as a simple majority vote bill, whereby it then received bipartisan support.

Cash Crunch 2012: It was either shocking news or just a gentle reminder that was delivered Tuesday morning by Controller John Chiang, just before the Assembly's budget-writing committee was scheduled to meet. The state is poised to run short on cash to pay monthly bills by March 1.

"This liquidity shortfall is projected to persist for a defined period of time -- about seven weeks, from February 29 until approximately April 13," wrote Chiang in a letter to the chairs of the Legislature's budget committees.

While the letter refers to a plan to provide $3.3 billion of cash in the bank, the details of that plan remained fuzzy by day's end. Some of it will be payment deferrals -- Chiang says that includes payments to the UC and CSU systems as well as Medi-Cal -- while another chunk, approximately $865 million, would come from internal fund borrowing assuming legislators send SB 95 to the governor's desk soon.

The rest, says a spokesman for Treasurer Bill Lockyer, will come from investors in what's effectively going to be a supplemental revenue anticipation note (RAN), but one offered to private investors much in the way Lockyer crafted a plan in 2011 during the federal debt ceiling debate.

The cash plan "is not an ideal solution," wrote Chiang, "but it is the best way to manage the challenge without relying on IOUs or delaying tax refunds."

2011 Campaign Cash: Tuesday's deadline for candidates and campaigns to file detailed fundraising and expense reports for the year that just ended didn't offer very many juicy details about the political year ahead. In fact, if anything it seemed to point out how few dollars were committed by December 31.

While Governor Brown made clear that he's in fine shape for a re-election bid, should he choose to undertake one (more than $5 million in his 2010 and 2014 accounts, combined), very few other campaigns seemed to report big bucks.

In fact, most striking was how small the war chests were (again, as of Dec. 31) for some big campaigns this year. Neither of the two initiatives on the June ballot, the Proposition 28 term limits change or the Proposition 29 cigarette tax, seemed to have attracted much moolah before the new year. Having said that, the tobacco companies that will no doubt fight Prop 29 could easily pony up cash anytime.

One of the standouts in terms of limited dollars: the California Republican Party. The state GOP bet big on getting the referendum against the new Senate redistricting maps qualified for the November ballot (and the signatures are still being counted); overall, the party's report shows it raised $4.2 million in 2011. But the state GOP only had $439,000 in cash left on Dec. 31, and the fate of the redistricting effort still seems somewhat in doubt.

Meantime, the redistricting referendum campaign reported (PDF) having only $620.31 in the bank on the final day of 2011 and has reported no 2012 contributions. The campaign owes $214,000 in unpaid bills.

Compare that to California Democrats, who reported raising $11 million in 2011 and still sitting on a rather impressive $9.3 million in cash as of Dec. 31. That suggests Dems are well positioned for legislative and even ballot measure efforts in 2012, while Republicans will need a major infusion of cash... and in a hurry.

And fast.

Newly released receipts show the state missed the mark for revenues in July by $538.8 million, a 10.3% over-assumption in the budget Brown signed into law on June 30.

Controller John Chiang's July cash report could be the first real evidence that the budget deal was predicated on a particuarly "rosy scenario" for the economy. It also significantly raises the specter of additional cuts using the so-called "trigger" mechanism contained in the new budget.

First, though, the numbers (which you can see either as a PDF summary or in full form on Chiang's website). The state took in more personal income tax revenue than expected (+$89 million, +2.9%), but much less sales tax revenue (-$139.4 million, -12.5%) and corporate tax revenue (-$69.5 million, -19.3%).

The total revenues for the month were about $40 million more than what was collected in July 2010. And there's the problem: lawmakers balanced the 2011-12 budget on the assumption that revenues would be much better than the year before, not just a little better.

"While we hope for better news in the months ahead, every drop in revenues puts us closer to the drastic trigger cuts that could be imposed next year," said Controller Chiang in a written statement.

And there's not much time to make up the difference. While Brown and his budget team agreed on upping revenue projections by $4 billion for the year, they pushed for the "trigger cuts" to kick in at much smaller levels of imbalance... and... for the "trigger" to be "pulled" in January.

If revenues are off by more than $1 billion, the package of cuts totals $601 million. Funding for UC, CSU, state developmental and in-home supportive services would be each cut by an additional $100 million; community college fees would go up an additional $10 per unit; new cuts would be made to subsidized child care ($23 million); provider rates would be cut and co-pays increased for Medi-Cal ($15 million); and higher fees would be charged to counties sending juveniles to state facilities ($72 million).

That's just a few of the first cuts (see entire list on page 5 of this PDF). These are also the cuts enacted by a gap of only $1 billion -- a projection that the state is already halfway toward hitting after only one month of the fiscal year. If revenues miss the mark by more than $2 billion, the additional cuts would hit K-12 schools.

To be fair, the controller's analysis doesn't see the weak revenues of July as continuing throughout the year. On the contrary, Chiang's staff says that consumer spending and personal income "should pick up in the second half of the [fiscal] year."

But again, the problem is that the state budget is built on strong revenues now, not later. And the governor's budget director will have to assess how the projections meet up with reality in December... some three months from now... and then make the call on those cuts.

Update 4:18 p.m. The governor's budget spokesman, H.D. Palmer, cautions against reading too much into the controller's cash analysis. For starters, Palmer says that data from various state agencies may soon show that not all of the revenue failed to materialize -- thus, the July shortfall may be smaller. He also says that December's big "trigger" determination will not rely simply on cash collected to date... but allows a new projection for the rest of the year. Translation: the state could be more than $1 billion short in actual cash at that point, but finance officials -- if they believe the shortfall will be made up before July 1, 2012 -- could still not pull said trigger.

For generations, legislators and governors promised that the state's fiscal plan penciled out. But now, in the era of perpetual deficits and polarized politics, traditional budget balancing has been replaced by creative accounting. And maybe what the state needs is a budget cop.

My story for our weekend newsmagazine edition of The California Report looks at the broader dispute behind the week's news of Controller John Chiang declaring the vetoed legislative budget imbalanced, and thus not good enough for legislators to get paid.

And there's some empirical evidence to suggest that budgets are getting much more iffy, especially in health services and corrections. Historical budget documents that track general fund "deficiencies" -- the amount by which the state overspends in a fiscal year -- show (PDF) that six of the ten biggest underfunded budgets since 1976 have been in the last decade. In fact, three of those were the last three state budgets.

To be fair, the "deficiency bill" data doesn't always mean lawmakers were crafting budgets they knew were full of unrealistic expectations. But more and more, it does. Just consider the budget year that's now winding down; in January, finance officials had already noted a $856.8 million "deficiency" in corrections. For several years running, lawmakers have balanced the state's books, in part, on expectations to save money on prisons that, well, was never saved.

Enter Controller Chiang, who only slightly dipped his toes into the 'budget gimmicks' pool last week in crunching the numbers. "I think you have to check the underlying math," he said in a phone interview after announcing that he will not pay legislators until they approve a balanced budget.

But Chiang wasn't just doing math; after all, the budget documents ratified by the Legislature all purported the plan to be balanced. What Chiang did was to assess whether the numbers used in that simple math were reasonable.

"We're entering new territory here," said Fred Silva, a former legislative budget expert who now works for the governance reform group California Forward. "And what the controller did, was he pulled the curtain back and looked back behind the scenes and argued that it's more than arithmetic."

But Controller Chiang says his power is limited. Not only did he avoid analysis of creative assumptions like the legislative budget's reliance on selling state buildings that Governor Jerry Brown says won't be sold, but Chiang will only intervene again if a new budget is vetoed.

A spokesman says Chiang (who, while part of the executive branch, is an independent constitutional officer elected by the people) does not believe that he has the authority to intervene once the governor's signature is on the budget.

"Currently, the controller's powers are largely implied," said state Sen. Sam Blakeslee (R-San Luis Obispo), author of a new constitutional amendment that would broaden those powers. Blakeslee's SCA 12 would give the controller three days between legislative ratification of a budget and a signature by the governor to do an independent analysis. That would no doubt put the controller, in those cases where gimmicks are flimsy, in a position to tell a governor that the budget could not be signed into law -- remember the requirement of Proposition 58.

There are, though, other ways to create some sort of budget cop already in use in other states. Data compiled by the National Association of State Budget Officers shows most states' attempts to police the budget process focus on how revenues are estimated, and who gives legislators the final tally of how much can be spent. 28 states have some sort of formal revenue estimating group within state government, with many stressing the goal of a "consensus" estimate. But other states go further in fact checking the budget. In the state of Washington, there's both an independent committee that oversees revenues and an independent committee to oversee and set levels for expenditures.

"There are different models around that could bring to bear some sense of objectivity," says California Forward's Fred Silva.

But no one knows whether Chiang's action will remain the exception to the rule, or whether it will spark an effort at budget reform that -- in essence -- validates the public's perception that elected lawmakers can no longer be trusted to write sound budgets.

That's their missing salary and per diem payments, of course.

This week's Capital Notes Podcast features a discussion about the big decision that cut off legislator paychecks, and the impact it's having on negotiations over a state budget.

Kevin Yamamura of the Sacramento Bee and Wyatt Buchanan of the San Francisco Chronicle and I also take stock of whether 'Budget Plan A' -- the plan offered by Governor Jerry Brown -- still shows any sign of life, with the new fiscal year now just days away.

Getty/Justin Sullivan

But inside the big domed building just down the street from Chiang's office here in Sacramento it's jeers, not cheers. And the political and legal battle surely to be launched by the actions of the state's chief financial officer add yet another historic footnote to a budget season chock full of noteworthy moments.

Controller Chiang today decided that two sections of the California Constitution, enacted separately by the voters via Proposition 25 in 2010 and Proposition 58 in 2004, require him to assess whether a budget ratified by the Legislature is "balanced," and to block all legislative paychecks scheduled to be sent out at the end of this month if it's not.

Chiang says last week's proposal doesn't meet the standard.

"The numbers simply did not add up, and the Legislature will forfeit their pay until a balanced budget is sent to the Governor," said the controller in a written statement at midday, which was accompanied by an analysis (PDF) of how he reached that conclusion.

That analysis shows the budget missed the 'balanced' designation, in the eyes of the controller, by $1.85 billion. His primary objection was the level of money provided for public schools under the Proposition 98 funding guarantee. Chiang asserts that the legislative budget missed the Prop 98 mark by $1.3 billion. Questions were first raised about the now vetoed budget's school funding level last week, outlined here in a story by our former KQED education reporter, Kathryn Baron.

Chiang's other findings seem to hinge on the decision by legislative Democrats to not send Governor Brown the related budget implementation, or "trailer," bills. Chiang's analysis identifies $954 million in solutions that he says can't be counted without those additional pieces of legislation. No doubt Democratic leaders have kept those bills off the Guv's desk for one simple reason: the hope that some of the solutions might be resuscitated for an eventual budget agreement, bills that were passed in some cases by twisting some politicians' arms that would be hard to twist a second time.

The controller's official statement leaves his rejection of the budget at those issues, and does not wade into other questionable assumptions included in the legislative budget. "While the vetoed budget contains solutions of questionable achievability and some to which I am personally opposed," said Chiang, "current law provides no authority for my office to second-guess them."

As mentioned in my posting over the weekend, this isn't the first time that John Chiang has been in the spotlight during state budget standoffs since taking office in 2005. But in years past, his stance on budget issues has been almost universally lauded by his fellow Democrats.

Not this time.

"I believe he was wrong," said Assembly Speaker John Perez in a statement. "The controller is, in effect, allowing legislative Republicans to control the budget process and I believe that’s a very unfortunate outcome that is inconsistent with the intent of Proposition 25."

On Monday, Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said that there's a broader issue at hand, one of separation of powers between the executive branch (which Chiang, while an independently elected statewide officer nonetheless inhabits) and the legislative branch.

Rank and file Democratic legislators were far less kind today to their fellow Democrat.

"I halted a fulfilling private sector career path to enter public service," said Assemblymember Mike Gatto (D-Burbank) in an emailed statement. "I now have to explain to my wife and daughter that we won't be able to pay the bills because a politician chose to grandstand at our expense."

Some Democrats are already suggesting that if it's more cuts that will make things right, then perhaps that's what they'll have to do. And those same Dems say privately that Chiang may now have to "own" the eventual budget, even if he has no role in its crafting or passage.

There were plenty of political jabs about the Democrats' budget last week and whether it was balanced through gimmicks. But questions about its legal status seemed rooted in the veto message from Governor Jerry Brown:

Unfortunately, the budget I have received is not a balanced solution. It continues big deficits for years to come and adds billions of dollars of new debt. It also contains legally questionable maneuvers, costly borrowing and unrealistic savings. Finally, it is not financeable and therefore will not allow us to meet our obligations as they occur.

No doubt Brown's own words will play a role in what will surely be a legal fight to come. No one has yet stepped up to say they will sue the controller; look to termed out legislators as perhaps the only ones who could withstand the ugly PR. In fact, the only mention of lawsuits at this point is in defense of Chiang's action from an unlikely backer: Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

"Dear Controller Chiang," Coupal tweeted this morning. "If you do your duty and withhold legislator compensation and are sued, HJTA will offer free legal representation."

All eyes are going to be on the state's chief financial officer to see whether he stops paying the salary and expenses of legislators.

Controller John Chiang says he will issue some sort of determination this week about the extent of his powers and obligations under the 2010 constitutional amendment that blocks legislative pay in the absence of a budget.

The key of course, is what the Legislature's duty is under Proposition 25 in order to get paid. Let's begin with the actual language of the initiative:

"...[I]n any year in which the budget bill is not passed by the Legislature by midnight on June 15, there shall be no appropriation from the current budget or future budget to pay any salary or reimbursement for travel or living expenses for Members of the Legislature during any regular or special session for the period from midnight on June 15 until the day that the budget bill is presented to the Governor. No salary or reimbursement for travel or living expenses forfeited pursuant to this subdivision shall be paid retroactively."

By that standard -- and the question may be whether this is the controlling standard -- it's hard to see how they don't get paid. After all, they sent the budget bill to Governor Jerry Brown (though they did not send the related "trailer" bills), which the passage above clearly says is the trigger.

But Chiang has already offered what reads like an argument to the contrary. On June 2, he announced that the standard was not just a budget but rather a "balanced budget." His position is based on 2004's Proposition 58, the compromise deal struck by Democrats and former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to add language to the California Constitution requiring a balanced spending plan, an amendment that sits in the same section of the state's blueprint as does Prop 25. Prop 58 was widely panned because it offered no clue on how to define "balanced." And every single budget passed and signed into law states that its inflow and outgo match up... even when they ultimately do not. As journalist and reform advocate Mark Paul wrote on Friday:

Under the constitution, a budget is balanced if the Legislature says it is balanced. That's a weak guarantee of fiscal balance, as budget wonks have noted ever since it was proposed and passed. But the constitution, a system of checks and balances, gives the governor the power to use his line item veto to bring spending in line with his projection of revenues. And legislators can seek to override those vetoes by a two-thirds vote if they disagree.

But there's still some murkiness thanks, in no small part, to the drafting of Proposition 25's 'Findings and Declarations,' where you'll find this sentence: "This measure requires incumbents to permanently forfeit their salaries and expenses for each day the budget is late."

How do we define "late?" The measure never says. In fact, the same section of Prop 25 interchangeably uses the terms "pass" and "enact," even when one word ("pass") is clearly something the Legislature can do when it comes to the budget, but the other ("enact") would ostensibly mean making it the law... and thus requiring the governor's signature.

Regardless, Controller Chiang is now clearly in the thick of it. For starters, there's doubt as to whether Chiang has any role to crunch budget numbers in search of "balance," and his press release from last week even says so. But should he weigh in, you've got to believe that this is headed to court. If he refuses to pay legislators, he will no doubt be sued by someone (a legislator, perhaps?) alleging that he's overstepped his authority. But if he writes those paychecks come June 30, he will indeed be sued by Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, who sent Chiang a letter on Friday putting him on notice.

Flickr: Chiang 2010 Campaign

"Passing a budget is a legislative act," tweeted state Sen. Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa). "Prop 25 doesn't make Controller the 121st legislator in the budget process."

Republicans might be as unhappy as Dems about losing their pay but could now believe there's a political advantage to be gained by tapping the 'stick it to the politicians' anger of voters. "I don't think we deserve to get paid," Assemblymember David Valadao (R-Hanford) told his local TV station. In truth, the no-pay action would save only about $50,000 a day, a very small amount of what the state spends. But symbolism has enormous value in politics. Just ask the interest groups, mostly aligned with Democrats, who put Prop 25 on the November ballot and ran a political campaign centered around the paycheck punishment.

Governor Brown also may have muddied the waters on the issue with his veto message. "Unfortunately, the budget I have received is not a balanced solution," wrote Brown. That's even though the budget documents asserted the plan's fiscal balance.

In the end, perhaps this is an area to which government reformers should turn their attention: who should certify what's real and what's make believe when it comes to the state budget? State Sen. Sam Blakeslee (R-San Luis Obispo) has already has announced his intention to draft a constitutional amendment explicitly giving the controller some of the powers now in dispute. And then we could always look to other states like... well... Texas, where the state's comptroller (roughly the same job) is given the power to provide the official estimate of revenues with which the state's legislators craft a spending plan.

Meantime, stay tuned on this one; it's going to get interesting.

Note: On my new California politics Facebook page, I've put up a very non-scientific poll question, asking if the Guv did the right thing in vetoing the budget last week. So far, the "Good for Jerry" side is winning handily... 94% say he did the right thing. Weigh in if you'd like!

"California is facing a fiscal crisis, and very strong medicine must be taken," said Brown from behind his desk in a video posted on YouTube.

So now what?

The budget ratified Wednesday, largely on a party-line vote, placed the veteran pol in a sticky wicket: veto it and ruffle some feathers, or sign it and trigger a chorus of "Brown broke his promise about gimmicks" comments by pundits and potshot takers alike.

At first, few seemed to think he'd do it. In fact, in records dating back to 1901, no one has found a gubernatorial budget veto (although others have been threatened, as recently as the summer of 2008). But Jerry Brown has made a career out of defying conventional wisdom. And given his passionate rebuke of budget gimmicks during the 2010 campaign, the veto of the budget seems to at least make good on those promises.

But lest conspiracy theorists think this was actually a clever plot by Democrats (to what end, I don't know), the leaders of the two houses of the Legislature came out today and politely slammed Brown -- they are all Democrats, after all -- for making a bad call.

"The governor is fond of citing The Art of War," said Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg at a morning news conference in the Capitol. "His decision is apparently part of some elaborate strategy to force a confrontation."

Democrats focused their fire on Brown's months long refusal to offer any kind of 'Plan B' in the event his cut-and-tax fiscal proposal was rejected by Republicans. Which, as we know, it was.

Steinberg also took aim at Brown's veto message (PDF) about the lack of enough real budget fixes, by reminding everyone that California gives its chief executive the power to strike spending via the line item veto.

"Quite frankly, his actions are dismaying," said Assembly Speaker John Perez.

While never calling the governor a bad person or a bad Democrat, the two legislative leaders seemed to do something even worse: they called him a bad politician.

Getty/Justin Sullivan

Steinberg: "The governor is really getting caught up, and frankly a little bit confused, between total victory... and progress."

But Governor Brown, speaking to reporters today in Los Angeles, was insistent that his veto is the only way to go.

"With a lot of thought, I decided that a veto of the entire budget was the most productive way to proceed," he said. "I think it will shake up the system in a way that will give a better result."

But to be accurate, what Brown vetoed was the budget bill "in chief" -- that is, the budget absent the many implementing "trailer" bills. It turns out those bills have yet to reach his desk... and... there's a chance that he might actually like some of those. For example, the governor said today he's intrigued by the bill to force online retailers to collect state sales tax (the so-called "Amazon bill"). And then there's the fiercely debated plan to eliminate local redevelopment agencies; Brown's version came up short of legislative votes in March, but the Democratic alternative -- should it pass legal challenges -- brings in the same amount of money, and perhaps even more over time.

Republicans were all too happy to jump on Brown's Bad Budget Bandwagon today, essentially doing a 'I told you so' to their fellow legislators on the other side of the aisle.

"Governor Brown today did the right thing by vetoing the sham budget passed by legislative Democrats," said Assembly GOP leader Connie Conway in a statement. "It contained billions in illegal tax increases and lacked common-sense reforms."

Of course, Brown took particular aim at GOP legislators in his written and public veto messages, saying their reluctance to cut a deal earlier this year was the first fatal blow.

The governor's coalition of budget backers -- business, education, and others -- seemed to generally applaud his action, while gingerly sidestepping the "Dem-on-Dem" nature of the dispute.

And as a sideshow to the big veto decision, the Capitol community is also abuzz as to whether Brown's veto message -- saying the Democratic budget was "not a balanced solution" -- would force Controller John Chiang to invoke Proposition 25 and therefore block legislator salary and per diem payments this month. Chiang's only message so far: I'm looking at it.

The real question, for now, is whether the state's precarious finances can hold up for a traditional summer-long standoff. Earlier this year, the controller's experts said that the state government was projected to run out of cash in the bank sometime in July. A spokesman said today that new projections should be ready next week, ones that will take into account a current year windfall of some $3.2 billion above January estimates. But the money will probably, in the end, drive the debate; it's been made pretty clear that absent either a budget with complete solutions, or one predicated on Brown's tax extensions but including detailed cuts that would trigger on in their sted, Wall Street investors won't give us the cash... raising the specter of IOUs like those issued in 2009.

That's the real thing to watch as the Capitol community, giddy for a brief moment yesterday over the prospect of a slow and easy summer, now seems resigned to fight it out all over again.

File Photo: AP/Rich Pedroncelli

No election in 2011, no immediate extension of hotly debated taxes, and -- in the wake of last fall's Proposition 25 -- no need for Republican legislators to be consulted.

The plan, described in detail by Assembly Democratic staffers, proposes to replace Brown's entire $10.8 billion revenue package with a mix of windfall revenues, additional cuts, and one-time solutions.

The Democratic legislative budget includes no debt repayment; reinstatement of Brown's original $2.85 billion deferral of money owed to K-12 schools and community colleges; an additional $300 million cut to higher education (shared equally by UC and CSU systems); an assumption that $2.2 billion from the sale of state buildings and from taking tobacco tax money from childhood programs survives court challenges; that the feds hand over $700 million to the state's Medi-Cal program; and that a complicated tax swap from years gone by is unwound, thus freeing up $900 million while canceling a quarter-cent of the sales tax decrease now scheduled to take effect on July 1.

Those are only some of the highlights, but ones that go a long way towards filling in the hole left by extracting the governor's revenues -- the only portions of the budget plan that were subject to a supermajority vote.

"We've worked hard with the governor to engage a handful of Republicans in each house," said Assembly Speaker John Perez. "It's essential that we not allow people to drag out the discussion for no real purpose."

The proposal appears to lay much of Governor Brown's complicated state/local government realignment plan aside, except for the public safety component that now is linked with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on prison overcrowding. Democrats say they would propose Brown's tax package be considered by voters in November 2012 -- a general election where voter turnout, thanks in part to the presidential race, should be high among Democrats.

The 'Plan B Budget' rejects a plan for $500 million in local law enforcement grants -- something sure to draw lots of local fire -- and tacks on a $12 vehicle registration fee to replace Motor Vehicle Account dollars that now come from the general fund -- a fee that Democratic staffers say doesn't trigger the Proposition 26 supermajority vote.

Whether the proposal relies on too many assumptions or gimmicks lies in the eye of the beholder. Following news by Controller John Chiang that May revenues were more than $400 million better than expected, the Democratic budget plan tacks on a similar amount in the 2011-12 year for a grand total of $800 million in solutions. The plan also asks the controller to delay a $540 million payment to the UC system for two months, thus counting as a budgetary "savings."

And as rumored, the Democratic budget appears to resolve the hot button issue of redevelopment with a take-it-or-leave plan: redevelopment agencies (RDAs) can either agree to a $1.7 billion one time raid, with annual payments to help the state's finances of $400 million... or... the RDAs will be officially scrapped.

No word from Governor Brown's office on how he feels about the proposal, and whether he'll sign it... at least nothing beyond his cryptic answer at Monday's news conference. Speaker Perez described the package as a "multi-year workout plan," and dismissed the political impact of accusations Wednesday's vote will be motivated by the budget-or-no-pay provision of Prop 25.

Rather, Democrats will work hard to portray this as an on-time budget that calms Wall Street jitters about lending the state money for cash flow needs this summer.

All of this should make for an interesting day of debate on Wednesday.

This may not be the thing you want to hear on the day you're asked to hand over your taxes owed in 2011, but the state of California needs your cash. And fast.

Through Friday, state data shows only about 31% of the tax revenues projected -- and counted on -- for April had come in, meaning the month needs to finish big to avoid adding to California's fiscal pressures.

Reporters have tallied the day-by-day tax collection in April for years, but it's a process that's gotten a lot easier in recent times thanks to a web page provided by Controller John Chiang to track each day's take.

It's important to remember that there's not much certainty in predicting the exact timing of when the dollars will come in, so it would be premature to sound the warning siren. Even a cursory glance at the 2010 daily data shows that, if things play out as they have in the past, the biggest days are likely to be in the second half of the month.

Still, it's been a relatively slow month for dollars to arrive. In the first 15 days of April, the state took in just under $2.15 billion; in the same time period in 2010, a little more had been collected -- about $2.17 billion.

Overall, California's revenues in the 2010-2011 budget year have been stronger than the year before. At the end of March, the state was $4.62 billion ahead of the end of March 2010. But that advantage has been shrinking slightly over the last two weeks, even after the single biggest day of the year -- this past Friday, when more than $522 million in state tax revenues came in.

April is a crucial month; Controller Chiang's office reports that last year, the traditional tax month accounted for some 16% of all state income revenues for the entire year. Should things fall short of projections this time around, it's going to make the work of Governor Jerry Brown and legislators that much harder... and the debate that much more heated.

Next up to watch: the coming 48 hours. In 2010, the two single biggest days were those immediately following the tax deadline, accounting for more than one fifth of the entire month's total.

With that, get those envelopes or e-files in... we're all watching.

Getty/Justin Sullivan

But this year, everyone seems to believe the deadline on Governor Jerry Brown's budget plan is real, which means that things are starting to get awfully busy on a number of fronts.

The quickened pace that the Capitol embarked on this morning is a product of the governor's campaign promise to seek voter ratification of any additional tax revenues, which translates into a late spring election to consider $14 billion in tax revenues.

While some are trying hard to quantify exactly how long lawmakers have to act (to both pass budget-related solutions and call a statewide election), the generally accepted answer is that Capitol actions need to be taken no later than the second week in March. That would give local elections officials somewhere around 12 weeks to prepare for an election; some say while it could be done in less time, an even shorter schedule for would be a gamble.

A quick look at some of the topics first out of the gate...

Controller Steps In On Redevelopment Fracas: The governor's proposal to abolish all future funding for some 400 redevelopment agencies across California has led to the most public gnashing of teeth so far. Today, Controller John Chiang announced he's launching an in-depth look at how a fraction of the state's RDAs spend property tax dollars.

"I think very few people have a good sense of how they're funded," said Chiang in a phone interview. He's selected 18 agencies to examine and plans to have results from the audits -- no surprise -- by early March.

A spokesperson for the California Redevelopment Association says the group welcomes Chiang's audits and is encouraging RDAs to fully participate.

Budget Hearings: Legislative subcommittees began their budget hearings today, and one of the last ones this afternoon offered a glimpse into just how many moving parts remain in Governor Brown's budget.

The Senate hearing was on K-12 education funding (PDF), and touched on the Guv's redevelopment proposal... mainly because abolishing RDAs would send as much as $1 billion in future years back to schools. But as the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office pointed out -- and an administration representative confirmed to the committee -- Brown still hasn't decided how that $1 billion would be spent. After all, said the LAO, the money coming back to local communities (after scrapping RDAs) would vary widely around the state. Would the $1 billion be collectively pooled and distributed somewhat equally to schools? Or would schools in some communities stand to inherit a lot more property tax dollars than schools in other communities? And if so, wouldn't that run afoul, asks the LAO, of the 1976 Serrrano v. Priest ruling on school funding?

Short answer from the Guv's Department of Finance: we're working on it.

Can Brown Get Legislators On Board? The real question to be answered over the next few weeks is whether legislators of both parties are willing to climb on board the Governor Brown Budget Train. Democrats are signaling, both publicly and privately, that they know they're going to have to "go up on" (real world translation: vote for) some ugly spending cuts -- ones so ugly that the Senate's budget chairman conjured up the idea of pirate punishment in describing what his fellow Democrats must do to balance the budget.

Meantime, Republicans are sending only the faintest of signals that they'd authorize a statewide vote on additional taxes. First out of the gate: supporters of replacing traditional public employee pensions with 401(k) type retirement plans. A newspaper story today says state Sen. Mimi Walters (R-Laguna Hills) will introduce legislation to do just that, and quotes Walters as suggesting that the two issues (pensions and a statewide vote on taxes) may be linked.

Walters lost the November election for state treasurer by a wide margin to incumbent Bill Lockyer, who wasted no time in dismissing the idea in an unrelated conference call this morning. "It makes no sense," he said. The treasurer then suggested that perhaps such proposals are being floated by those who think don't like public pension funds that manage retirement money "for working people, not rich people."

But back to the budget, Republicans are not offering much else in the way of suggestions to get them to send a tax question to the ballot. And if that continues to be their stance, then we're likely going to get down to yet another 'who blinks first?' situation in the statehouse -- as both Democrats and Republicans weigh the policy and political ramifications of sticking to their positions versus compromising on things currently considered sacred.