Getting past the extremes in California's budget battle

Think of this week's special election as a multimillion-dollar Rorschach test. Though the voters made it clear how much they disliked five ballot initiatives proposed by elected leaders to address California's budget crisis, the message was much more ambiguous as to why they rejected the initiatives or what should come next. As a result, everyone can take from the results exactly what they wish to -- and construct lessons that precisely fit their ideology and worldview.

Conservatives saw the package's defeat as evidence that the voters don't want tax increases. Liberals argue that the landslide was proof that voters don't want spending cuts. Both are correct, but popular solutions to horrific budget crises are in short supply. That means that both sides are going to have to compromise at some future date, leaving these important unanswered questions: When will that date come, and how much pain will be caused along the way?

The morning after Tuesday's electoral chastisement, Democratic and Republican leaders were saying all the right things. They acknowledged the depth of the voters' anger and the scope of the state's budget emergency, and they vowed to work together to solve the problem. But predictable fault lines were already emerging.

Republican legislators reaffirmed their opposition to tax increases but were reluctant to specify spending reductions. Senior Democrats agreed that significant spending reductions would be necessary but hinted that proposals for new taxes were likely to be part of their solution. And in the middle, as always, was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, preparing to spend the summer catching javelins thrown his way from his left and right flanks.

The root of this bipartisan intransigence is a redistricting process that elects only the most conservative of Republicans and the most liberal of Democrats to the Assembly and state Senate. Of the 120 legislators in the state Capitol, only a handful were elected in legitimately competitive races. The rest ran in districts drawn to be safe for members of one party or the other, which means that most legislators are understandably much more concerned about the prospect of losing a primary campaign to an even more ideologically intense member of their own party than about being defeated in a general election. The result is a Legislature far more attuned to the needs of its most extreme and vocal members, with precious little incentive to put aside partisanship under all but the most unusual circumstances.