California is stuck. More than two months have passed since the constitutional deadline to adopt a state budget for the '08-'09 fiscal year, and there's still no budget. What's worse, potential compromises all involve adding measures to this November's ballot. And the deadline for adding such measures already has passed -- it was Saturday. It's unlikely that legislative Republicans, who as the minority party are able to hold things up because California requires a two-thirds vote for budget passage, will relent on their demand for a rainy day fund and some sort of spending limit. Such changes are constitutional and require a vote of the people. Plus, Democrats are banking on money from borrowing against lottery revenues to pay for programs. Since the lottery was enacted by ballot initiative, these kinds of changes to the lottery require another vote of the people.

So what's the way out? Here's a fearless prediction: California's legislature will pass and the governor will sign a budget sometime in the next month. And that budget likely will include ballot measures on spending and the lottery as part of the compromise. But those measures can't appear on this November's ballot. Time has run out. Instead, they'll appear on the next scheduled statewide ballot -- in June 2010. In effect, the California's '08-'09 budget fight might not end until then. 

There's one way it could happen sooner.... Don't go there, you say, but here it is...  The governor has the power to call a special election. And for a state with as many structural problems as California's, another vote of the people would offer an important policy opportunity. A 2009 special election ballot could include measures that come out of this year's budget deal -- plus measures that hopefully would result from the tax reform effort being advocated by Assembly Speaker Karen Bass. Politically, however, it would be difficult for Schwarzenegger, who called a disastrous 2005 special election, to call yet another election. Three political pros I surveyed today all agreed that the idea of another special is "insane". But so is much of California's current dysfunction. How about another special election, Arnold?