Cries for reform of California government come from all sides

SACRAMENTO — These are desperate days in the California statehouse.

Lawmakers are floundering as they attempt to halt a financial meltdown. Their popularity has plunged even lower than usual.

Now the 120 women and men of the California Legislature face another daunting challenge: a growing push to reconstruct the way state government works. If legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger don't take steps to overhaul their operations, it might be done for them.

The unraveling budget has spurred groups of the political left, right and center to press full speed ahead with campaigns for what each considers the remedy for dysfunction.

A bipartisan organization sponsored by several foundations is finalizing a menu of potential solutions. Those are expected to include a change in budgeting practices and a possible shift of state-run programs such as health, education and welfare to local governments that may enjoy more public trust.

A deep-pocketed Bay Area business group that includes Google and Yahoo is pressing ahead with plans for a constitutional convention. In that scenario, 400 California residents of all stripes would ponder the state's problems in a months-long session and draft a new blueprint for government that presumably would land on the statewide ballot.

State employee unions are pushing for a repeal of the Legislature's two-thirds vote requirement for tax hikes and budget approval. And conservatives have been authorized by the state to collect signatures on what they hope will become a ballot measure that would return the Legislature to part-time status.

"We may be at a Howard Jarvis-Paul Gann moment," said Assemblyman Michael Villines (R-Clovis), referring to the authors of Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that launched a nationwide tax revolt. "There's a huge frustration among the electorate right now, and there's a lot of wind in the sails of these reform movements."

California has reinvented itself before.

The last true constitutional convention took place in 1878. Progressive-era reforms meant to overcome the power of railroad barons led to changes in 1911 that ushered in the initiative process. And a commission toiled for more than a dozen years in the 1960s and '70s, enacting a slew of constitutional revisions that included the birth of a full-time Legislature.