EDITORIAL : IT'S ABOUT TIME; LAWMAKERS SHOULD STOP CUTTING SECRET BUDGET DEALS THAT LEAVE RESIDENTS IN THE DARK.

PSST. State lawmakers, meeting in private, agreed on the framework for a $76 billion budget for 1998-99. Thanks for telling us. It's only our tax money with which you're playing.

And with a $4.4 billion surplus they had a lot with which to play. Indecision about what to do with it is why the budget is nearly five weeks past due.

It took Gov. Pete Wilson and the top Democrats and Republicans in the Assembly and Senate those weeks to strike a deal that affects the lives of 33 million Californians.

This illegal, improper and unnecessary charade has become an unfortunate tradition in California, so it's hard to be outraged by it happening once again.

Especially so since the back-room deal struck by the Big Five - as they like to be known - has some bright spots.

At the top of the list is agreement on a $1.4 billion tax cut for 1999 and a plan for that to grow to $3.6 billion in five years if the economy continues to flourish.

That, of course, is a big if.

Unless the lawmakers rewrite the agreement, the only way Californians will receive that $3.6 billion tax break is if they pay $27 billion more in taxes in 2003-04 than they did in 1996.

In the meantime, Wilson is touting the $1.4 billion cut as the largest ever undertaken by a state. Sure enough he'll use that if he chooses to run for president in 2000.

It includes a 25 percent car-tax credit amounting to $1 billion for motorists who register their cars, trucks, motorcycles and trailers, and $161 million in renters tax credits, among other reductions.

But what would have happened if the lawmakers decided to get the budget done by the constitutional deadline of July 1 and not reached this so-called historic agreement?

If the lawmakers had done nothing, Assemblyman Tom McClintock, R-Granada Hills, says taxpayers would be getting a $1.7 billion tax cut in 1999 because of two provisions in state law and the likely passage of a ballot initiative this November:

When the budget reserve had reached 4 percent, which it surely would have given the size of the state's surplus, a one-quarter-cent sales tax component would have been automatically suspended, saving taxpayers $985 million a year.

A sunset clause in the renter tax credit would have resulted in a $540 million reduction.

Proposition 7, an air-quality improvement initiative that the Big Five have included in their package, would save taxpayers $218 million a year.

So thanks for nothing.

What's troubling each year is that most of hang-ups occur when the Big Five meet behind closed doors.

What they need to agree on is holding these budget negotiations in public. On television.

The leaders say they need the private sessions to solve the sticky problems the budget-writing committee could not. This is a veiled excuse for keeping secret the private deals that keep pork in the budget, such as a $40 million tax break for racetrack owners and a $7.3 million break for those who grow and sell ``perennial plants.''

We say it's time for the hard-working residents who fill the state's coffers with tax dollars to see what deals are being cut.