For weeks, Governor Schwarzenegger has barnstormed the state trying to drum up support for his effort to reform the annual process that governs the state budget. But back here in Sacramento, he may soon run short on time for a substantive debate over just how to do that.

The governor’s current thoughts on budget reform were laid out in his State of the State speech in January. But changing the budget process requires that voters first amend the state constitution. And before they can do that, there needs to be legislation introduced… which hasn’t happened.

And the clock is ticking.

A check of state election law and some quick math courtesy of elections officials shows that any proposal for the November 4 ballot is supposed to be approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor no later than Thursday, June 26.

That’s just about two months if you’re keeping track at home.

At this morning’s weekly briefing for the press corps, Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said that a formal budget reform proposal is immiment. “Time is on our side,” he said, while also emphasizing that the governor wants the issue resolved this year.

And McLear said that a legislator has agreed to carry the bill, but he declined to identify the legislator. This afternoon, one well-placed legislative staffer said that negotiations over what the budget reform plan will look like are actually still ongoing… which makes the administration’s pronouncements seem a tad optimistic.

To be fair, the sketch laid out by the governor in January does include some specifics for policy wonks to chew on– including the squirreling away of excess revenues in good years, and automatic cuts when a deficit is projected and the Legislature fails to act.

But there are far more questions about how it would actually work. And one only has to turn the clock back to 2005 to see how the fine print of Proposition 76, Schwarzenegger’s most recent budget reform plan, spelled its doom. In particular that time, education advocates decried the measure’s ability to slash funding for public schools.

And as you can hear below, in a piece I filed for The California Report a few weeks ago, some Democrats are also leery of giving the executive branch new powers over the budget… no matter how it’s designed.

As Capitol watchers might guess, June 26 is nowhere near a hard and fast deadline. Lawmakers are notorious for going into extra innings when it comes to getting something on the ballot… even sometimes agreeing to pay for supplemental ballot pamphlets long after they’ve missed the printing deadlines.

But it seems folly to suggest that there’s lots of time left for a major change in budget governance in 2008. And the delay stands in stark contrast to the governor’s message in dozens of local forums in recent weeks that there’s real “urgency” to the issue.

And the later things get officially started on the issue here at the Capitol, the more likely that budget reform will get folded in with negotiations over the current budget morass.

On this week’s Capital Notes Podcast, we wax poetically about some of the latest poltical and policy news… including an insurance industry crackdown, grumbling among some legislative Democrats when it comes to party politics, and the latest news on the state’s growing budget deficit.

Capitol Weekly editor Anthony York and I trek through the week’s news with our usual repartee. Consider yourself warned.

Related Information:

“State Launches Unprecedented Review of HMO Coverage Cancellations,” by John Howard & Anthony York of Capitol Weekly

“Perata’s ‘No Show’ Letter to Staff Chiefs Fuels Capitol Anger,” by Anthony York of Capitol Weekly

“Tax Blues… State Government Style,” by John Myers at KQED Capital Notes

Governor Schwarzenegger’s appearance at the Bay Area Council’s annual event this morning felt more like a celebrity interview than a policy discussion, though perhaps that changed after the first 20 minutes or so… which is when the video feed went down.

Still, a fun quip came when the moderator asked Schwarzenegger to name a policy disagreement he’s had with his wife, First Lady Maria Shriver. The governor replied with describing the day he came home a few weeks ago.

“All of a sudden,” he said, “I see an Obama sign in front of my home.”

The audience laughed at the reference to the first couple’s presidential split. She’s endorsed Democrat Barack Obama; he’s endorsed Republican John McCain.

The governor went on to quote his wife talking about Obama. “‘Oh, he’s so cool,’” he said he remembers Shriver saying. The audience at the Alameda event ate it up.

But the best line came next. In a reference surely to make supporters of Democrat Hillary Clinton feel slighted, Schwarzenegger said he sees his household Obama-McCain disagreement as having a silver lining come November.

“It doesn’t matter who gets elected, we’re in.”

Legislation to change how, and possibly where, new Indian casinos are built in California cleared its first hurdle today at the state Capitol.

For years, the most controversial part of the tribal gaming process has been casinos proposed for land that either isn’t an ancestral reservation… or land that the federal government hasn’t yet recognized as part of a tribe’s reservation. Critics have derided such proposals as examples of “reservation shopping,” accusing tribes and their deep-pocketed investors of choosing locations solely based on how much money can be made.

The legislation in question, SB 1695, would change the way new casinos are approved, by prohibiting the governor from negotiating with any tribe whose casino land hasn’t yet been sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Interior.

(A quick explainer to those who don’t follow this issue much: federal law lays out a long process for non-Indian land to become a reservation. It also requires a tribe to negotiate a formal gaming agreement, known as a compact, with the governor of the state before opening a casino.)

Governor Schwarzenegger has negotiated a number of casino compacts with Indian tribes since he took office, but his most controversial deals have seemed to be ones where the land hadn’t yet secured a federal OK. Most notable on this list: the long saga of the two tribes wanting to build side-by-side casinos in Barstow… even though the tribes’ reservations are in another part of the state. Schwarzenegger agreed to the casinos long before the feds had ruled on the proposal; earlier this year it was rejected.

The bill, authored by Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter), simply says that the governor can’t negotiate a formal compact until the feds have had their say. The current version of the legislation is notably more tame than the original, which would have essentially banned any tribe from opening a casino on land away from its ancestral home… presumably even if that tribe no longer has a reservation (and many don’t).

The bill sailed out of the Senate Governmental Organization committee this afternoon, which Florez chairs (its one dissenting vote: Sen. Pat Wiggins, a Democrat whose northern California district includes one of the tribes that wanted to go to Barstow).

A spokesperson for Schwarzenegger said the guv won’t take a position on the bill until it reaches his desk.

If the Legislature sends it to him, it certainly puts him in an interesting position: if he signs it, it would seem to imply that some mistakes were made in the past. And it would seemingly derail secret negotiations he might currently be conducting with some tribes (though there’s no official confirmation that any casno negotiations are even underway).

But if he vetoes it, critics of the rapid expansion of Indian gambling will say the governor is ignoring the plight of communities that don’t want casinos, and that he’s being inconsistent with his earlier pronouncements about the siting of new tribal gambling facilities.

Yes, it’s April 15th. Yes, it’s not a fun day for those of us (myself included) who wrote a check to the state. But this year, it’s even worse if you’re a state lawmaker trying to balance the books for the fiscal year that’s about to begin.

New data out today from the budget shop of Governor Schwarzenegger shows that revenues collected in March for the state’s General Fund were $912 million less than expected for the month… and as a result, total revenues for the year are almost $1.2 billion behind projections. Keep in mind that those revenues come from several sources, only one of which is personal income taxes; corporate tax revenues were also down, for example.

But in April, it’s personal income taxes that everyone cares about. After all, this is the month where most of those taxes are paid for the year. And the presence (or lack thereof) of those revenues are why state budget writers go back and revise their proposals in May… just weeks before the new fiscal year begins on July 1.

Every day this month, the folks at the Franchise Tax Board are opening those tax envelopes and adding up the totals on the checks. This is a process budget wonks have been keeping tabs on for years. This time, however, it’s easy for anyone to monitor. Controller John Chiang has a new page on his website where daily preliminary tax receipts are being released.

In other words, you can see for youself how much is coming in… and how it compares to the tax revenues that came in during April of last year.

As of yesterday, the site shows almost $1.6 billion in personal income taxes have been mailed in this month. That seems to be running slightly ahead of 2007 (though the report is lagging by a day or so). No data has yet been entered for today. And remember, just because you mail it by tonight… the folks at the FTB may not actually get it in their hands for a few more days.

It will be interesting over the next two weeks to watch these totals, and to see just how in the hole the state really is. Remember, most everyone assumes that the budget-balancing actions taken by the governor and Legislature earlier this year may have only solved about half of a problem estimated at near $16 billion.

But remember, revenues were already behind projections when April began. And the governor’s budget assumes a whopping $12.1 billion in personal income tax revenues will come in this month alone. How close will we get? The controller’s website will have some answers over the coming days.

It’s still more than six months away, but there’s a good chance the November statewide ballot could feature some of the most interesting ballot measure battles in recent memory — perhaps not because of the deep pockets behind the campaigns, but because of the actual issues themselves.

At this point, only two proposals have nailed down a spot on the fall ballot. One is a long suffering bond offering to jump start California’s long discussion over high-speed rail. I say “long suffering,” because the bond measure has been moved from ballot to ballot in recent years by the Legislature… usually because they didn’t want to risk voters feeling overwhelmed by all the new borrowing, and thus reject other bond proposals (most notably, the Governor Schwarzenegger-led infrastructure bonds of 2006).

The second currently qualified measure, as reported last week, is one to ban certain kinds of animal confinement on California farms. The ag industry is likely to fight this one with a big campaign warning of the economic costs, while animal rights advocates will no doubt make an impassioned ethics and morality argument.

Another argument of morality and ethics could be in store with a new chapter in the debate over same sex marriage. There’s a reasonably good chance that an initiative to amend the state constitution banning same sex marriages could qualify. It’s a much tougher stance on the issue than the still debated Proposition 22 from 2000. And its chances at being on the November ballot are real enough that Governor Schwarzenegger waded in to the issue last week, telling a gathering of gay Republicans that he’s strongly opposed to the proposal. That, as you might imagine, didn’t sit well with many of the conservative groups pushing the proposal. The timing of the ballot fight could be particularly combustible, as the California Supreme Court’s ruling on the issue is expected by the summer.

What else? Well, a coalition described as environmentalists, labor leaders, and others have submitted what they say is enough signatures for an initiative requiring 50% of all California energy be from renewable sources by 2025. And elections officials are checking signatures on two health care initiatives: one that affirms that health care is a “fundamental human right,” and one to sell bonds to pay for new hospitals for children.

And if that isn’t enough, there seems to be a very good chance that the Schwarzenegger-endorsed initiative to change the process of political redistricting. The proposal was written by a handful of government reform groups, but is being bankrolled largely by the governor’s political operation… a sign that its chances for getting on the November ballot are very good.

That’s seven ballot measures right there… and many more are in circulation. Yes, we’ve had this many… and more… on the ballot before. But remember, voter turnout is likely to be huge on November 4 — the most closely watched presidential campaign in a generation — and it’ll be fascinating to see who shows up at the polls for that race, and subsequently weighs in on these big issues, too.

Voters in the 12th state Senate district will do more than just participate in the state’s primary election on Tuesday, June 3: they’ll also weigh in on whether to recall their sitting senator.

Governor Schwarzenegger acted today to consolidate the recall against Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Merced) with the already scheduled election day. Denham, a two term GOP senator, faces a possible removal from office two years early… after Democrats financed the gathering of signatures to force a recall election.