California voters could hardly be more disgusted at government's chronic inability to solve state budget woes effectively and on time.

Only 4 percent, according to a recent poll, have a "great deal" of confidence that lawmakers can do the right thing on the overdue spending plan.

But the same voters have passed laws that virtually guarantee annual spending increases for education, severely restrict what can be cut from transportation and local governments and make it virtually impossible to raise taxes.

When voters are polled, huge majorities oppose cuts to schools, health care, law enforcement, road building, parks, the environment – just about everything the state does. But they also oppose higher taxes on sales, property and income (except for the highest earners).

"They want to spend without being taxed enough to support all the spending they've mandated over the years," said Republican political consultant Rob Stutzman, former communications director for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "It creates a patchwork of measures that starts to make the state ungovernable."

Sacramento business owner Gordon MacGregor fits the pattern. He doesn't favor higher taxes or cuts to schools, law enforcement or road building. He wants lawmakers to get the budget done – at least before leaving on summer recess like they have this year.

But he understands that he and other voters have set a high bar.

"I guess the root of the problem is as a society we're quick to come up with laws that seem to make sense, but we don't always think about who is going to pay for those things and how they're going to be managed," MacGregor said. "What do we do now that we've painted ourselves into a corner? I don't know that there's a fix-all that will make it all better."

The current debate at the Capitol centers on a $15.2 billion shortfall in the $101 billion general fund for the fiscal year that started July 1. The entire budget, including bonds and special funds, amounts to $144 billion.

Democrats have advanced a plan that would raise $8.2 billion in taxes and restore much of the school spending Schwarzenegger proposed to cut. Republicans, whose votes are required to approve new taxes or pass a budget, say they have no intention of voting for a tax increase.

One thing both parties agree on, however, is that the task is more complex with the voter-approved ballot measures of the past 30 years.

"I think those things which have been put in place by initiative make it very difficult to in fact balance the budget of the state," said Sen. Dave Cox, R-Fair Oaks, an adamant opponent of tax increases. "It gives you very little flexibility."

The two-thirds vote requirement for a budget has existed since 1933, but lawmakers had few budget-making restrictions until the populist anti-tax uprising of 1978 with Proposition 13.

Approved that year by nearly two-thirds of voters, it enjoys untouchable status 30 years later. Besides limiting local property taxes – a move that shifted much of the school funding burden to the state budget – the legacy of Howard Jarvis imposed the two-thirds vote requirement for the Legislature to approve tax increases.

"Prop. 13 was a cause and an effect" of ballot-box budgeting, said Mark Baldassare, a pollster and president of the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California. "Voters needed to take charge because their elected officials weren't up to the task. But it definitely had an effect on the voters' sense that they need to be involved."

To Mac Taylor, deputy analyst at the Legislative Analyst's Office, Proposition 13 was "an epic event to show people what could be done through initiative … to affect changes that couldn't be accomplished through the legislative process."

Other budget-related ballot measures followed in short order, from the passage of Proposition 98, which guaranteed K-12 schools and community colleges 40 percent to 50 percent of general fund revenues, to voters' rejection of Proposition 56, which would have lowered the two-thirds vote requirement to pass the budget or raise taxes.

Call Bee Capitol Bureau Chief Dan Smith, (916) 321-5249.