Many Californians are probably feeling relieved now that legislative leaders from both parties and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have reached agreement on a plan to address the state's persistent budget shortfall, estimated at $26 billion and growing.

The agreement, if ratified by two-thirds of the members in each house of the Legislature, might ease the state's cash-flow crisis and end the issuance of IOUs to pay the bills, closing a not-unprecedented but still embarrassing chapter in the state's fiscal history. And the simple act of resolution, regardless of the details, will bring a welcome break from an endless stream of stories about the state's dire financial condition.

Unfortunately, that respite will be short-lived. We've yet to see all the details from the deal cobbled together in secret by the state's political leadership over the past week. But what we do know leads us to believe that the agreement will do little more than buy the Legislature and the governor some time to regroup and fight another day.

California's state government faces an ongoing gap between the revenues coming in from taxes and the spending programmed by current law. The size of that gap fluctuates, but it's safe to say it is within a few billion dollars of $20 billion a year, or about 20 percent of the state's general fund budget. The gap alone is more than the taxpayers spend on prisons and universities combined.

This budget deal includes some serious reductions for schools, colleges, health care and public assistance. It will not only require sacrifice, it will cause significant pain to some of the state's most vulnerable residents, including the poor, the elderly and the disabled. Some children who need health insurance won't get it, and people who need help caring for developmentally disabled family members will be turned away. Local governments will be forced to cut their own services, including law enforcement, parks and public transit.

Nonetheless, the plan only scratches the surface of what is necessary to put the state back in the black. It is built on a base of billions of dollars in temporary tax increases approved in February and scheduled to expire in 2011, and temporary federal aid that is due to disappear even sooner. On top of that shaky foundation, legislative leaders and the governor have built a rickety house of borrowed money, shifted funds and old-fashioned gimmicks.

Even a poorly built house can provide temporary shelter in a storm, however, and this structure will probably last for at least a few months. We hope the state's leaders, interest groups and the general public use that time to consider seriously a dramatic overhaul of the way the state governs itself and manages its finances.

Once seen as a national trendsetter, California now desperately needs to update its government for the information age and the 21st century. Like a company in bankruptcy, the state needs to re-examine all it does from top to bottom, keep what it must, jettison what it can and improve just about everything. If the current crop of leaders can't do this, we need new leaders or new rules governing their deliberations, or both.

This budget deal, rather than solving the state's problems, only shows that they cannot or will not be solved by the powers that be in the Capitol today.