California IN BRIEF : SACRAMENTO : Panel Offers Ways for Better Government

Legislators and the governor, hamstrung by voter initiatives, play a shell game with California’s budget to cloak deficits and questionable borrowing, a blue-ribbon commission concluded Tuesday. The 23-member California Citizens Budget Commission offered 31 recommendations to speed up budget deliberations, assure public scrutiny and limit what it called needless gridlock in the Capitol. The core of the problem: locked-in restrictions, such as legal minimums for education and welfare funding, that account for 90% of the budget and leave just 10% at the discretion of elected officials.