Anybody who watches the California Legislature up close probably understands the voters' impulse to pass measures tying the hands of lawmakers when it comes to managing the budget. When the Legislature's approval rating hovers around 15 percent, the public isn't going to trust the politicians to make important decisions.

But with the economy stalled, state revenues cratering, and program cuts and tax increases on the table, it's time for the voters to grant some slack. It is in our own best interests to do so.

Ideally, voters would pass a single measure suspending all the budget edicts they have enacted since 1988, when Proposition 98 amended the constitution to dedicate about 40 percent of the state's general fund to education spending.

Since then, voters have increased taxes on tobacco (twice), gasoline and millionaires, and each time decreed that the money be spent only for a specific purpose. They also shifted a share of the sales tax from the general fund to transportation, walled off local government revenues and set aside a portion of the budget for after-school programs.

Given the depth and breadth of the emergency facing the state, a three-year suspension of all these measures seems in order. At the end of that period, the ballot-box measures could take effect again, but any money shifted in the meantime would not need to be "repaid" to the programs that lost it.

Such a sweeping, radical proposal probably has no chance of passing, however, because all of the interest groups that supported those measures in the first place would oppose it. A more realistic alternative would be a more targeted ballot measure asking the voters to shift their mandates from one narrow purpose to another.

This idea, in fact, has been proposed in one form or another by several players in the Capitol budget debate, including legislative Republicans, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the nonpartisan legislative analyst.

The Republicans, in their Dec. 15 budget plan, proposed asking the voters to shift about $6 billion from two programs created by Proposition 10 in 1998 and Proposition 63 in 2004. About $2.1 billion in unspent tobacco tax money from Proposition 10 would go to children's health programs, and $3.9 billion from the millionaire's income tax surcharge enacted in Proposition 63 would go to mental health programs in the general fund.

The governor endorsed the same concept, though in a much more modest way. He suggested that voters be asked to redirect only $500 million from the two measures into the general fund.

The legislative analyst, meanwhile, suggested that revenue from another tobacco tax, Proposition 99, be shifted to health care, and that the governor's own Proposition 49 be set aside so that schools could spend more money on their core mission and less on after-school programs.

Whether the shift is open-ended or directed to another specific purpose, however, the end effect is the same: more flexibility for lawmakers to prioritize how to spend the tax dollars coming into the state. And that would be a good thing.

These changes should not be thought of, in the vernacular of the Capitol, as "raids" on these special funds. All of this money belongs to all of us, as Californians. If this year we decide that spending income tax money on core mental health programs is more important than expanding mental health programs while cutting basic services, that's simply a decision we, as voters, can make. We're not raiding anything; we are just reassessing our priorities. And we shouldn't force ourselves to "repay" any of these funds at a later date.

Think of your own household. If one of the breadwinners in your family lost their job and you were falling behind on the mortgage, would you continue to set money aside for your kids college education, or would you suspend those savings for a time and use the money for a more pressing concern? At some point, if things got bad enough, you might even cancel your health insurance to pay for food, shelter or clothing.

These are not pleasant scenarios to ponder, but that's the shape the state government is in right now. It cannot afford to pay for the basics. So it doesn't make sense to keep diverting a share of the tax money the state collects to programs which, while important, might be a lower priority than programs that are being cut.

Two of the most powerful people in the Capitol – the governor and Senate leader Darrell Steinberg – were authors of ballot-box budgeting measures. Schwarzenegger sponsored Proposition 49, which expanded after-school programs, and Steinberg authored Proposition 63, the mental health measure.

Both should set an example for the rest of the state by acknowledging that, during this emergency, the money set aside for their programs would be better spent on the state's most basic needs, and asking the voters to make that shift.