No paying the piper.

You could almost feel the money. It was a fundraiser for the Fulfillment Fund, which provides mentoring for disadvantaged kids, and Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone and his wife Paula were being honored. It was the kind of event that goes on most any night of the week in this town--a ballroom filled with prosperous bizboys and bizgals making the rounds as they or their companies plunk down a few grand for a table.

A few, like the guy sitting next to me, even made a $20,000 bid on some ski vacation where a private jet delivers you to one of those remote mountains you read about in the travel magazines. Someone else outbid him but it was nip and tuck for a while. Later, the front table with all the big cheeses took out their checkbooks for the fund's scholarship programs.

In scanning the room that night, just hours after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had presented his sketchy plan to repair California, one thing was clear: most everyone present could afford a tripling of the car tax. They could, in fact, pay for several car taxes without blinking. Instead, they get to keep those few hundred bucks while the state tacks on another $4 billion to its bill.

For all the chatter about solving the fiscal mess we've gotten ourselves into, the focus is on Wall Street financing and spending caps and a business-friendly climate that will stimulate the economy.

These are all worthwhile pursuits--necessary ones in fact. But there is seldom any discussion about a more obvious answer: California taking out their own checkbooks and doing their fair share.

Why not, as my wife suggested, give these well-heeled folks the option of paying the extra car tax? If the guy bidding on that ski trip could afford 20 grand on a whim, surely he can help out a state in desperate need. Figure out a way of checking off the charge on your state tax form in April, as the feds do with campaign financing. Sacramento would make note of the adjustment and either deduct the amount from your refund or send you an extra bill.

You'll be surprised how many folks would take the hint. Why? Because, it's the right thing to do. You can moan all you want about how inept the system has become--and of course it's true--but it's the same system we all rely on, whether to fix our streets or teach our kids or regulate our hospitals or watch over our environment. At some point, isn't it everybody's responsibility to step forward and help sort out the mess?

This is not charity. This is not tax-and-spend. This is not acquiescing to some money-grubbing special interest. This is, at its core, standing in the middle of a disaster area and deciding to get involved, to make a difference.

Schwarzenegger himself seemed to suggest such sacrifice by announcing that he would forego his own salary of $175,000. And yet aside from that single gesture, the new administration remains conjoined with the anti-tax crowd, whose long-running obstinacy has done more damage to this state than anything Gray Davis ever ordered.

By refusing to consider an emergency short-term tax increase, by not making long-needed adjustments to Proposition 13 and by summarily killing the car tax increase without first identifying ways to make up the shortfall, the new governor's message is loud and clear.

Don't worry about taking out your checkbook. We'll just borrow money, slash budgets and cut taxes. Well, at least they'll be plenty left for those ski trips.

Mark Lacter is editor of the Business Journal.