In today's Sacramento Bee, columnist Dan Walters corrects some misunderstandings about Prop 13. Bottom line: Prop 13 underlies California's problems, but its limits on property taxes are not the fundamental problem--it's the way that the initiative changed governance in the state.

Here's a funny little exchange between Gov. Schwarzenegger and Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters during a budget press conference in a Capitol hallway yesterday.

GOVERNOR:...I think that Democrats and Republicans are working together on this. And the key thing is now to just really make sure they don't come up with one-time solutions, because even if you go and withhold your taxes, it's a one-time solution. Or if you go and move the date of paying your paychecks from June 30th to July 1st, to kick it over to the next fiscal year, that's a one-time solution. It doesn't help you in the out years. And so what we have to think about is, how do we make sure that we get rid of the structural deficit once and for all? I think this is what the people expect us to do, to solve this crisis, to solve these problems. Then our credit rating will be good again, people will want to do business with us, people will get money to us. So all good things will happen if we solve this problem and solve it, solve the entire $24 billion.
WALTERS: Governor, don't you have one-time solutions yourself? You have the accelerated withholding. Isn't that a one-time solution?
GOVERNOR: Absolutely correct. And what we don't want to do is add to those, because we make --
WALTERS: So it's all right if you do it but no all right if they do it?
GOVERNOR: No, not to add onto it. Very good point, Daniel. (Laughter) I mean, we don't want to add onto the problem.

Put on your $2 shoes and play the above to hear the late Woodrow Wilson Guthrie of Okemah, Oklahoma, where your blogger has kin (Woody was a cousin by marriage), sing "Goin' Down That Road Feeling Bad." And then read this very interesting story from the Sacramento Bee about the 275,000 Californians who have gone back to the Dust Bowl states of Oklahoma and Texas in search of lower-cost housing, jobs and pastures of plenty.

Here's a link to the poll, which shows five of the six measures on the May 19 special election ballot with less than 50 percent support. Here's pollster Mark Baldassare's take on the results in the Sacramento Bee. And here's my upbeat prediction, via Fox & Hounds Daily.

That optimism is based on the fact that opposition to the measures is poorly funded, disorganized and late to the game. The Sacramento Bee, in this news story, suggests the opponents are coming together to fight Prop 1A, the spending limit. But the opposition is forming too late to make much difference on its own. The real problem is that people don't understand much about the measure other than its link to taxes. As Ted Costa, the anti-tax activist who is co-chair of one of the campaigns against 1A, said on a conference call yesterday, "We can beat this with just robocalls." 1A likely loses even without a campaign against it.

It's bad enough that California law permits the attorney general -- an elected, partisan official -- to write the official titles and summaries for ballot initiatives that qualify from the ballot. Most of the time, at least, the a.g. is independent of the initiative sponsor. But when it comes to measures that are placed on the ballot by the legislature itself, lawmakers themselves get to write the official summaries. And they don't have a good record of being honest with the public.

The latest example is Prop 1A, the spending limit measure that was part of last week's budget deal and will appear on the May 19 special election ballot. As the Sacramento Bee points out in this story, the legislature's official description of the measure omits the very important fact that if the measure passes, temporary tax increases in the budget deal will last longer. (The tax provision was inserted to discourage unions and liberal groups from fighting the measure on the ballot -- a tactic that, so far, seems to be working).

California needs an independent title board that would draft titles and summaries for ballot initiatives and legislative measures -- anything that goes to the people. Such a board should be balanced between Democrats and Republicans and independents. The board's only mission would be to give voters an accurate description of the measure.

I'm thinking of suing the state for legislative pay. As a voter. To secure the vote of Republican state senator Abel Maldonado, a holdout whose vote is needed to pass a massive budget compromise bill in California, Democrats are considering Maldonado's demand for three ballot measures, the Sacramento Bee reports. The measures would create an open, or "top two" primary for the state, prohibit legislative pay raises if the budget is in deficit, and prevent lawmakers from receiving salaries if the budget is not passed on time.

Those three measures would be on top of the five other ballot measures required by other aspects of the deal. In all, Californians would have to vote on eight measures that are part of a mega-compromise. None of the measures are simple. They include changes to the state's education funding formula, the reversal of previous ballot initiatives on early childhood education and mental health, a new spending cap for the state, and a plan to borrow against future lottery revenues.

In the Sacramento Bee, New America's Steven Hill examines claims being made in California about the value of a "top two"-style open primary, which appears to be the new favorite idea of the state's community of goo goo reformers. Hill is skeptical of claims that such a primary would produce more moderate office holders or provide voter choice -- particularly in light of Washington state's experience with such a primary.

Gov. Schwarzenegger largely punted in describing the state of the state. So others have picked up the slack. The Sacramento Bee's Dan Weintraub explains how we're doing. There's a little good news, and some bad. 

Even more interesting is this extraordinary piece by New America's Micah Weinberg. He puts Schwarzenegger's speech in context, comparing it to the rhetoric of  other governors. This is part of an extensively analysis Weinberg did of the words governors across the country use. The results are startling: it's what you say, not what you do.

I conducted an analysis of the rhetoric of 97 governors that compared the language in their speeches to that of national party platforms. It showed that approval ratings were higher, chances of re-election greater and margins of victory larger if governors used partisan language that appealed to the political majority in their states. On the other hand, the actual fiscal policy changes they presided over had no discernable effect on their political fortunes.

So if you're a governor in a Republican state, it is not necessary to actually cut taxes in order to be successful, but you'd better talk about cutting taxes as frequently as you can. And in a Democratic state, you need not succeed in expanding state programs, but you had better say that you're planning on doing so.

Author and longtime Sacramento Bee columnist Peter Schrag shows up in the LA Times with a piece today that, more than anything I've recently read, explains the political dynamics behind the state's cash crunch. Republicans blogs are already attacking it, but Schrag has plenty to say about Democrats too.

Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters draws a picture Sunday of the reform landscape in California. He puts Leon Panetta's California Forward as the incrementalist side of the reform movement and the Bay Area Council (which wants a constitutional convention) and the New America Foundation (your blogger's employer, which has been talking about changing the make-up of the legislature) as the big-thinking, "aggressive" side. More on this subject later--after I go out and aggressively hunt big game for dinner.