CONVENTION COULD REWRITE LAWS SACRAMENTO BUZZING WITH OLD REFORM IDEA.

Byline: Steve Geissinger Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - With skeptics discounting the Schwarzenegger administration's government streamlining plan as failed ideas of the past, the governor's aides acknowledge a potent but volatile concept has re- emerged for the first time in seven decades: a constitutional convention to implement reforms quickly.

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faces an uphill battle to adopt changes he likes in a wide-ranging proposal that a task force gave him last week. But analysts say legislators who might oppose him also know the recall of Gov. Gray Davis in October was a sign that voters wanted the kind of swift change a convention could achieve.

Schwarzenegger has talked about trying to push overhaul recommendations through the Legislature, where majority Democrats are already balking at wholesale alterations. The governor also has mentioned using executive orders and even putting proposals directly before voters.

But administration officials say there's another way - Article XVIII, Section II of the California Constitution. It permits a constitutional convention of citizens as an emergency outlet in troubled times, and officials say it is the most powerful and sweeping government-reform tool of all.

``It's not a likely avenue, but no options will be taken off the table until the process is done,'' said Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Ashley Snee.

It has been more than a century since Californians held their only two constitutional conventions.

The governor would need a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to place the question before voters of whether to call a constitutional revision convention. If one were called, delegates elected from throughout the state would meet and forge proposals that would be put to a statewide vote.

Legislative leaders declined to comment, saying they had not been approached about the idea.

Analysts say there's an underlying reason why legislators - and even Schwarzenegger - might not want to use the tool.

``The Legislature and the governor would lose control if they handed it over to a convention,'' said Bruce Cain, director of the governmental studies institute at the University of California at Berkeley. ``In the last century, people in power have become less willing to cede the agenda to nonpolitical professionals and to citizens.''

The report by Schwarzenegger's task force recommended consolidating 11 agencies and 79 departments into 11 divisions and cutting growth in state employment by 12,000 positions by 2010 while eliminating 118 boards and commissions.

``If you hold an actual constitutional revision convention, nobody knows what would happen,'' said Daniel Lowenstein, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. ``I'm not sure there are many people around who want to roll the dice in that way.''

Steve Geissinger, [phone]

sgeissinger(at)angnewspapers.com