It's beginning to look as if California voters will have ample opportunities to recast their state government next year. This afternoon, the blue-blood reform group California Forward (funded by a coalition of the state's best-endowed foundations) filed two initiatives that deal with budgeting and fiscal matters.

The filing comes two days after a group called Repair California filed a ballot initiative that would call a citizens' convention to revise the state constitution. In addition, lawmakers have already placed on the June ballot a measure that implent a top-two, open primary, in which any voter could vote for any candidate of any party in primary elections and the top two vote-getters would advance to the general election.

The first of the California Forward proposals would make several changes in the budget process, including:
-- Allow lawmakers to pass a budget, but not tax increases, with a majority vote instead of the existing two-thirds majority requirement.
-- Force a two-thirds majority whenever lawmakers consider raising fees to replace tax revenue. This is targeted at a proposal legislative Democrats pushed last year that would have had the effect of raising taxes by majority vote by abolishing the gas tax and replacing the revenue with a majority-vote "highway users' fee" on gasoline.
-- Require legislators and the governor to develop a two-year financing plan.
-- Require lawmakers to specify how they are going to pay for any significant program expansions or tax cuts, by naming either what programs would be cut or enacting a tax increase to pay for their actions.

The second deals with local government finance. Among its provisions are:
-- An assurance that revenues from any taxes or fees levied by local governments would stay at the local level and not be diverted by the state.
-- A provision that allows local agencies to work together to develop countywide action plans. If they do so, the local board of supervisors could place on a countywide ballot a 1 cent sales tax increase and the revenue would be divided among local government agencies.

It apparently took a while for the message to be deciphered, but it seems that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the official conduct of his office, delivered a rather direct statement in his Oct. 12 veto of a bill by San Francisco Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano.

The language of the official message is a generic political diatribe about the shortcomings of the Legislature. But there is a coded message in there as well. Since this blog is hosted by family newspaper, here's what I'll say about the message: The first paragaph is four lines, and the first letter of the first line is "F." The second paragraph is three lines, and the first letter is "Y." The code can be broken by reading vertically down the left side of the page, the first letter of every line.

The veto came several days after Ammiano walked out of a San Francisco Democratic fund-raiser at which Schwarzenegger had shown up unexpectedly, a guest of former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who brought the governor from another event that was taking place in the same hotel. Schwarzenegger was loudly booed, and Ammiano walked out as the governor spoke, suggesting that Schwarzenegger kiss him on the body part last seen leaving the door.

In one of the least-publicized acts of placing a ballot proposition before voters, the Legislature last year approved a novel, test-the-waters measure that would allow for public financing of future campaigns for secretary of state. The measure will go into effect only if ratified by voters next June, and its backers released a poll today that shows the initial public response to the "Fair Elections Act" to be strongly favorable.

Although voters overwhelmingly rejected a "clean money" scheme for financing campaigns for all statewide offices in 2006, this measure has been surgically crafted to draw public support. The key is that nearly all the money to finance the campaigns will come from a new fee to be imposed on a group of folks that voters generally hold in contempt: lobbyists and the interest groups that pay them.

It also targets an office that voters rightly believe should be free from partisan influence; the secretary of state, after all, is the state's chief elections officer, the person who must certify that all votes are properly counted and that election results accurately reflect the voters' will.

The telephone poll of 800 likely primary voters, conducted Oct. 11-15 by Lake Research Partners, shows 63 percent support, 22 percent opposition and 16 percent undecided. Further, it shows support across party lines: 65 percent of Democrats and independents, 59 percent of Republicans.

To qualify for public financing, candidates would have to agree to strict spending limits and not accept any private contributions. To qualify, a candidate would first have to $5 contributions from 7,500 people; that money would serve only to certify the legitimacy of the candidate, as the revenue would ultimately be put into the public financing pot.

One of the concerns about a potential constitutional convention in California to address such issues as budgetary and political reform is that it could get out of hand -- and that delegates would decide to stray off into other areas involving individual rights and liberties.

How do Californians feel about that? It depends on which direction a runaway convention would run, according to a new Field Poll on the issue.

When pollsters asked California voters whether they thought the convention "should be limited to matters relating to the way government operates rather than including social issues such as same-sex marriage," a solid 59 percent said the convention should be limitied.

But when they asked whether the convention should stray into issues involving illegal immigation, a plurality of voters said that would be a good idea (48 percent to 42 percent).

It's something to keep in mind as Californians consider the merits of a convention. The last time the state held such a convention, in 1879, the new constitution included several anti-Chinese immigrant provisions, such as barring those of Chinese ancestry from owning property.

At a daylong conference on reform issues in Sacramento yesterday, Prof. Amy Bridges of UC San Diego, who has extensively studied the constitutional conventions of Western states, said that social and religious issues have always found a way into the discussions. "You probably can't get away from it," she said. "It will come up."

The "Target Book," a respected newsletter on California politics that examines the dynamics of all legislative and congressional districts in the state, has come out with its initial lists of what it anticipates will be targeted districts in 2010.

It identifies 13 such Assembly districts, and two of them include portions of Ventura County. One is the 37th District, which will be an open seat because incumbent Audra Strickland, R-Moorpark, is termed out. Strickland herself was targeted by Democrats in 2008, and was re-elected by just a 4 percentage-point margin. The other is the 38th District, where incumbent Republican Cameron Smyth of Santa Clarita will be seeking his third term in the district that includes much of Simi Valley. Smyth's re-election margin in 2008 was 10 percentage points.

These things change, depending on the strengths of each party's candidates and other dynamics as the campaigns evolve. But coming out of the box, it appears that there could be some political action in store in Ventura County a year from now.

When reading yesterday's solid story in the San Jose Mercury News on Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's tenure as CEO of eBay, I came across a line that stopped me in my tracks -- because I had written it before, about somebody else.

It said that one of Whitman's first acts after being hired in February 1998 was that she "replaced the lawn chairs with corporate cubicles."

Four years ago, in a profile on then-Democratic gubernatorial nominee Steve Westly, also an early eBay executive, I had paraphrased what Westly told me about one of his first acts when he was hired in 1997 as vice president of business development: "to order the office lawn chairs replaced with traditional furniture."

How could Whitman have scrapped the lawn chairs in '98 if Westly jettisoned them in '97?

To get to the bottom of this, I consulted the bible on eBay history and mythology, Adam Cohen's book "The Perfect Store." Cohen puts the year of the lawn chairs' demise at 1997, but credits neither Westly nor Whitman. "(Founder Pierre) Omidyar and (president Jeffrey) Skoll decided that the time had come to replace the beach chairs and assembled desks with real furniture."