EDITORIAL BUDGET GAMES NO ONE IN SACRAMENTO IS WILLING TO DEAL SERIOUSLY WITH THE STATE'S DEFICIT.

TRY, if you can, to make sense of state leaders' strategy for dealing with the budget crisis.

First there's Gov. Gray Davis, who wants to fill part of the $34.6 billion budget hole by eliminating the $4 billion in annual ``back-fill'' payments Sacramento has made to cities and towns ever since reducing the vehicle license fee in 1998.

That suggestion drew predictable outrage from local leaders. Mayors from the state's seven largest cities, including Los Angeles' own James Hahn, descended on Sacramento on Wednesday to demand restoring the car tax to its pre-1998 levels.

But Davis, despite advocating a vehicle license fee increase in the past, opposes the idea. And now, he's backed off his own back-fill proposal, too. The cuts would require a vote of the Legislature, he says, adding what he knew all along, ``No such vote is likely to come close in the foreseeable future.''

Great, but that begs an important question:

Since Davis didn't think his plan for balancing the budget was ever going to get off the ground, why did he propose it in the first place?

And now that he's conceded that the state won't save $4 billion on back- fill payments, where does he propose that that money will come from?

Certainly it's not in significant cuts to the bureaucracy. Amid all the proposals floating around Sacramento, that seems to be the only one that's not on the table.

But Davis isn't the only one in Sacramento without a clear vision.

There's also Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, D-Culver City, who is working to triple the car tax. To sidestep a possible public referendum on the matter, Wesson and fellow Assembly Democrats have reclassified the vehicle license fee as a ``levy'' and exempted owners of cars bought for less than $5,000 from paying it altogether.

The motivation for the shift isn't compassion for the poor, but disdain for the public. Because the tax-hike legislation includes a tax cut for some, it isn't eligible for review at the ballot box.

But there's a bizarre irony in the party that prides itself on its environmentalism creating what would be, in effect, a state subsidy for the most polluting clunkers on the road.

Were the Assembly Democrats' vehicle license fee plan to become law, owners of cars that were built well before modern fuel-efficiency or pollution standards would pay no tax at all. But the environmentally conscious Californian who scrimps and saves to buy a new, cleaner and safer vehicle would see his or her car taxes go up 300 percent - hundreds of dollars a year.

It makes no sense, but then none of what's going on in Sacramento makes much sense.

Democrats, who control all top statewide offices as well as both houses of the Legislature, are spinning their wheels, hoping that if they ignore the budget's problems long enough, those problems will disappear.

And Republicans seem to be basking in the irresponsibility of permanent- minority status, squawking from a safe distance but unwilling to enter the fray themselves.

Meanwhile, Davis is sending his finance officials to Wall Street next week, hoping to secure loans at unspecified interest rates to help keep the state's books balanced.

Absent a willingness to make some tough decisions on taxes and spending, racking up debt seems to be the closest thing to a plan that anyone in Sacramento can come up with.

Where's the integrity in that?

Where's the leadership?

It's nowhere to be seen in Sacramento. Maybe Wall Street bankers can decide how California should be governed.