Coming requests could exacerbate state budget gap.

The numbers in California's fiscal travails could keep getting higher and higher--assuming state and local voters go along with the $45 billion in bond measures that could end up on the March and November 2004 ballots.

It's hard to know how the public outcry over the budget shortfalls will impact those votes. Local school bond measures have been passing with increasing regularity ever since the threshold for approving them was lowered from two thirds to 55 percent. As for the other measures, much could depend on just how many are on the ballot.

"The amount of bonding might get so big that people will throw up their hands and vote no," said John Ellwood, professor of political science at University of California Berkeley.

The state Legislature has put up two big measures: In March, it's the second half of a mammoth $25 billion school facilities funding program. (Voters passed the first $13 billion last year.) Then on the November ballot is a $10 billion bond for the start of a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

In recent weeks, proposals have been circulating for billions more in bond measures. The focus in March is in L.A., where Los Angeles Unified School District officials want voters to consider a $3.8 billion school facilities bond measure to take advantage of matching funds from Sacramento. L.A. Mayor James Hahn said he was considering putting a bond measure or a parcel tax on the March ballot to fund the hiring of more police officers.

On top of this, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority received authorization from the Legislature last month to place a half-cent sales tax measure on the March ballot to fund extensions of the Gold Line and the Red Line subway, and the Exposition light rail line to the Westside--an annual take of nearly $1 billion.

But that's peanuts compared to billions of dollars in state debt. Now, court challenges are threatening the centerpiece of the 2003-04 budget passed two months ago: $10.7 billion in "deficit financing bonds." The basis for the challenge is a section in the state constitution that appears to say such large amounts of debt cannot be enacted without a vote of the people.

Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger said he might put this and other state debt to a vote of the people, which would satisfy any legal concerns about borrowing. Since that comment, there's been talk of a massive bond measure to retire state debt, possibly topping $15 billion.

The deadline for the Legislature to place it on the March ballot is this Thursday. That leaves next November's ballot, which could doom the high-speed rail measure.

"It's ironic," said Kiln Rueben, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. "Backers of the high-speed rail measure specifically targeted the November ballot to avoid being on the same ballot as the school bond. Now, it's possible that the debt-retirement bond could be on that-ballot."

Before any debt retirement bond even makes it to the November 2004 ballot, the state will have to do more short-term borrowing, which could be prohibited by the courts.

Staff reporter Howard Fine can be reached by phone at [phone], ext. 227, or by e-mail at [e-mail]