California's political dysfunction is now an accepted fact, and as noted here previously, reform has become something of a cottage industry.

Books have been written about it, several organizations have been formed to make government more functional, countless academic and think-tank seminars have been staged, and voters have adopted two modest reforms that will be tested this year – a "top-two" primary system and independent redistricting.

The most active reform group is called California Forward, a collection of political and civic figures that has spent millions of foundation dollars. Many of its members are also associated with the Think Long Committee for California, created by globe-trotting billionaire Nicolas Berggruen with similar aims.

The Think Long group was proposing an ambitious tax and budget reform agenda but backed away, and Berggruen gave money instead to California Forward for a ballot measure whose most contentious provision would prohibit the Legislature from reducing taxes or raising spending by $25 million or more without offsetting spending cuts or revenue increases.

It's known in political circles as "pay-go" and is aimed at the Capitol's bad habit of squandering revenue windfalls on permanent but unsustainable spending and tax cuts.

Pay-go tends to be favored by those in the political middle and disliked by those on the left because it limits spending and by those on the right because it curbs tax cuts.

Signatures have been gathered to place the measure on the November ballot. Not surprisingly, it's opposed by both the business-friendly California Taxpayers Association and a coalition of unions, which has declared it to be "a stealth attack on working people's priorities" and threatened all-out war.

California Forward Issue Action Fund is submitting signatures and apparently has enough to qualify it for the November ballot, but it says it still wants "negotiations in hopes that a full deal can be reached."

In other words, were the Legislature to adopt some version of pay-go by itself, California Forward would back off even if its measure qualifies for the ballot.

Fat chance, since the Legislature is almost completely dominated by union-friendly Democrats. But the unions' political plate is already full with contentious legislative races, another ballot measure that would curb their ability to raise political money and Gov. Jerry Brown's tax increase.

Brown, meanwhile, is already competing on the tax front with wealthy attorney Molly Munger and worries that the California Forward measure could confuse voters even more.

It's gut-check time for California Forward. Does it damn the political torpedoes and forge ahead? Or does it retreat like Think Long, unwilling to confront the dysfunctional, polarized status quo it says must change?

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