Prop. 1F targets lawmaker salary hikes

SACRAMENTO —  California voters have often used the ballot box to give politicians a collective spanking. They’ve limited terms in office, eliminated lawmakers’ pensions and stripped away their power to gerrymander.

Now, as the red ink rises and state officials’ approval ratings plunge, a ballot measure in Tuesday’s special election takes a whack at their wages.

Proposition 1F would bar salary hikes for elected leaders in deficit years such as the one that begins July 1, when California is staring at a budget hole that could soar to $21.3 billion.

Recent polls suggest that Proposition 1F will pass in a landslide while its companion ballot measures -- all of them drafted by Sacramento politicians grappling for budget solutions -- will flop.

“Proposition 1F is like a carnival hammer game,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. “It’s going to really ring the bell.”

Even after lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hack their way to a revised budget, they face a mounting movement to revamp the way state business is done.

A group from the Bay Area wants a statewide vote next year to authorize California’s first constitutional convention in a century, a process that would let average citizens craft wholesale changes in state government. Another policy outfit talks of using the November 2010 election to retrofit the inner workings of the state’s legislative, budgetary and electoral processes.

Whatever the outcome Tuesday, “California is desperately in need of a major structural redo, and we have to work toward that,” said Jim Wunderman of the Bay Area Council, the business-backed public policy organization advocating a constitutional convention.

Proposition 1F is more modest in scope. It would require that, before June 1 of each year, the state finance director notify the California Citizens Compensation Commission -- the appointed body that sets salaries for lawmakers and statewide officials -- if a deficit is expected for the upcoming fiscal year. If so, raises would be prohibited.

In late 2007, a few months after Schwarzenegger slashed spending to balance the books, the wage commission gave legislators a 2.75% hike to their current pay of $116,208 -- the nation’s highest. The next closest is Michigan, where state lawmakers get $79,650 a year.

There is some rationale for the big paydays. Aside from having the nation’s highest cost of living, California is one of four states -- the others are Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania -- where lawmakers work essentially year-round, represent big districts and manage big staffs, said Morgan Cullen, a policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“These people are essentially the board of directors of a multibillion-dollar organization,” Cullen said. “It’s different than operating the state of Wyoming.”

But they’re also increasingly held in contempt by the average voter, particularly as state government has been gripped by gridlock and chronic budget deficits. A poll by the Public Policy Institute of California last week pegged voter approval of Schwarzenegger at an anemic 34%, while the Legislature is plunging toward single digits at just 12%.

“There is broad disdain for partisan gridlock and what the public sees as weakness of character among our elected leaders,” said James P. Mayer, executive director of California Forward, a policy coalition pressing for a slate of government changes.

Mayer’s group plans to push after the election for greater public participation, oversight and accountability in the state budget process. Mayer said some government responsibilities and funding also could be shifted to local governments, which enjoy more voter trust.

It will follow up this summer, Mayer said, with a campaign for ballot measures to tighten political ethics laws, revamp term limits and promote open-primary elections that allow voters to cross party lines.

Julie Soderlund, a spokeswoman for the campaign supporting the half-dozen ballot measures, said voter displeasure with state government is a given. But that frustration, she said, shouldn’t mean rejection of the five other ballot measures intended to raise $23 billion in coming years to help the state balance its books and avoid ever steeper spending cuts.

“Budgets, water policy, government reform -- you name it, there’s a stalemate over it,” Soderlund said. “But voters need to remember that it’s not the politicians in Sacramento who will be hurt if 1F is the only measure to pass. It’s everyday people. It’s all of us who rely on state government.”

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eric.bailey@latimes.com