EDITORIAL PUBLIC NOTICE VOTERS MUST HOLD THEIR STATE LEGISLATORS ACCOUNTABLE IF THEY WANT CHANGE.

HE'S only been in office for a week, but for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the honeymoon is already over - if it ever really began.

With each day, it becomes more clear that if Schwarzenegger is going to fulfill his promise to become the people's governor, he's going to need a lot of help from the people, because it doesn't look like Democrats learned anything from the recall election.

When, on his first day in office, Schwarzenegger repealed the despised tripling of the car tax, the state's Democratic leaders howled. Never mind that Schwarzenegger had received a clear mandate to slash the tax from the public, or that the mechanism Davis had used to hike the tax was arguably illegal. The state's Democratic leaders weren't about to change their ways.

Schwarzenegger might have been elected on the promise of bipartisanship, but partisanship runs in Sacramento Democrats' blood. And ideologically, they are wed to the philosophy of high taxes.

So now they wail against Schwarzenegger's tentative proposal to restructure some $15 billion of state debt.

True, they never objected to borrowing before. In fact, they borrowed billions to get out of the energy crisis without solving the basic problem and borrowed billions more to keep on their spending binge when the economic recession hit.

But this time the borrowing is being proposed by a Republican, one they despise for disrupting their five-year exercise in one-party rule that has brought California to the brink of ruin: Energy crisis, budget crisis, workers' compensation crisis, unemployment insurance crisis, public employees pension crisis.

Now that they've made such a mess, legislative Democrats are looking to stick Schwarzenegger with the blame, unless he agrees to as much as $10 billion in higher taxes.

Clearly, they just don't get it.

Schwarzenegger didn't win the recall election despite his no-new-taxes pledge, he won because of it. The people of California are tired of paying an ever-mounting bill for the Legislature's reckless ways. They're fed up with a government that refuses to iron out its inefficiencies, cast off dead weight or cut back its perks.

They elected Schwarzenegger to hold taxes in check, and one week into office, he's not about to break the central promise of his campaign.

It's Democratic officeholders who now must be ready to give, recognizing that it's the will of the people, not the desires of special interests or the demands of a spent ideology, that ultimately governs politics.

And because recall wasn't enough to make the will of the people clear to them, the people will have to bring the message to them directly.

At a rally last week in the San Fernando Valley, Schwarzenegger told supporters, ``I need you to call your legislators and say, `We want to have Arnold's recovery package. We want his recovery plan. We want to have his bond, recovery bond, not your increase in taxes.'''

Elections are coming up March 4. If you want California's problems addressed, if you want the future to look brighter than the past few years, you're going to have to start paying attention and speaking up.

Only you can save California. You need to tell your legislators that you're not going to take it anymore. You want a new kind of government, one dedicated to solving problems, not simply getting bigger.

We've provided the addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of all local elected state officials on the following page. Look up your state senators and Assembly members, and let them know where you stand.

It's time to put them on notice.