Richie Ross, the Sacramento power broker, lays out his plan for fixing California's budget system -- the baseball arbitration system is his model -- in George Skelton's column in today's Los Angeles Times.

The gist: just as players and teams submit salary proposals to an arbitrator when they can't agree on a contract, Democrats and Republicans would submit their own budgets to voters. Whichever drew more votes would become the budget.

Problems with this idea? Several. But given the fondness California voters have shown for spending far more than they're taxed, it's a good bet that voters would choose -- over and over -- the more fiscally irresponsible of the two budgets they were presented.