In a major public service, the Legislative Analyst's Office in California has created a video explaining Prop 98, California's famously complicated education funding guarantee. Here's a link.

Of course, the main thing the video accomplishes is confirming just how complicated the initiative is (despite the protestations of John Mockler, its author, who has long maintained it isn't that difficult to understand). The video takes 20 minutes to explain 98.

Want more proof that the initiative process is too powerful in California? All the recent talk about lawmakers reaching a budget deal is bunk. The deal, even if it passes, requires the voters to sign off on multiple ballot measures later this year. That's right -- California simply can't handle a budget emergency without a vote of the people.

Details have not been released, but I count at least five separate ballot measures that would be needed to complete this deal: 1. a measure authorizing the modernizing of the lottery and borrowing against future funds. 2. the approval of some sort of new spending limit that Republicans insisted upon in negotiations. 3. Changes to the state's education funding formula. 4. A measure permitting the state to raid money that voters approved for early childhood programs and 5. A measure permitting the state to raid money that voters approved for mental health programs.

Given the extreme costs of delays by the legislature, and their inability to do much without the voters OK, the real question is: why bother having a legislature at all?

John Matsusaka of the Initiative & Referendum Institute at USC had an excellent piece on the state's budget problems. One important point he makes: the ballot initiative is not to blame for our budget troubles. He notes that the legislature would spend about half of the budget on education without Prop 98, and that all the other initiatives ever approved lock in only about 2 percent of the state budget. Matsusaka points to spending growth -- and the power of interest groups that demand more spending -- as the root of the problem.

Here's my piece on Prop 98, California's education funding guarantee, in today's Los Angeles Times. Prop 98 is very, very complicated, but it generally does what it's supposed to: protect education. In the piece, I consider various problems with the formula and various ways to fix it, but conclude with only one reform.

The debate over competing statewide initiatives on eminent domain -- Propositions 98 and 99 on the June 3 ballot in California -- is focusing on Prop 98's prohibition of rent control, the Contra Costa Times says. Recent polling shows that voters are inclined to turn down both initiatives.