LOS ANGELES -- It's just another day in paradise. Sunny, 75 degrees. Also, this news from the morning papers around California last Friday:

L.A. CANCELS MOST SUMMER SCHOOL CLASSES

GOV. PROPOSES 5 PERCENT CUT IN STATE EMPLOYEE SALARIES

AREA'S STATE PARKS ARE ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK

COUNTY RAIDS HOMELESS CAMP

BART FARES GOING UP 6.5 PERCENT ON JULY 1

That's one day's news. Yesterday was just as bad -- and tomorrow will be the same, maybe worse.

California is collapsing. Schools are closing. Teachers are being laid off. Policemen are being laid off. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing shutting down 220 of 279 state parks, including Sutter's Mill, source of the gold that made the Golden State.

Next year's budget, which is gridlocked in the state Legislature, has a projected deficit of $25 billion and counting. And there is not much anyone can do about closing that gap because the laws governing this place are too democratic by half. California, going back to Proposition 13 in 1978, has been governed by referendum and initiative. California never met a "reform" it didn't like, and voters have used those reforms to cut their own taxes, mandating that any increases must be approved by a vote of two-thirds of the Legislature -- something that isn't going to happen.

What is happening, helped along by mortgage foreclosures, national recession and 11 percent unemployment, is that people are living under freeway and bridge overpasses. You could easily film a new version of "The Grapes of Wrath" around here.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine, summed up the situation in an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times. Commenting on proposals to call a constitutional convention to rewrite the state's basic law -- something else that isn't going to happen -- Dean Chemerinsky said:

"The California Constitution is deeply flawed and desperately needs revision. The requirement that the budget as well as any tax hikes must be approved by a two-thirds vote ... ensures legislative gridlock and is a large part of why the state is now in such desperate financial shape. The overused initiative process has led to a host of unfunded, voter passed programs that distort the state's spending priorities. ... Proposition 13, which limits property taxes, has a greatly distorting effect on the state's tax structure, and I would certainly argue that it should be repealed or, at least, reformed. But simple politics tells us that a proposal to repeal Proposition 13 ... could doom any constitutional reform."

It is impossible to describe in a single column what Prop 13 did to the governing of California. It passed back in 1979 -- I covered the story -- because a likable old crank named Howard Jarvis, a lobbyist for apartment house owners, worked like hell to get enough signatures to get the thing on the ballot as an initiative.

Among other things it addressed a real problem caused by the state's booming real estate market. Old people were having trouble keeping their homes as real estate taxes increased with property values. Many people on more-or-less fixed incomes could no longer afford to pay real estate taxes on their own homes. If you bought a house for $30,000 and its value exploded to $300,000 in a few years, your taxes rode that same curve.

So Jarvis proposed resetting property taxes at 1 percent of purchase price. I was living here then and the taxes on our house (purchase price $70,000) immediately dropped from more than $4,000 to $700 a year -- and could only be raised by 2 percent a year after that. Today, California neighbors in identical houses pay grossly different taxes depending on how long they have owned the house. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, still alive and well, puts out charts showing that if you bought a house for $99,550 in 1980, you have saved an average of $4,805 annually. Adding all those numbers together, for millions of homeowners, the Jarvis Association boasts that it has saved homeowners $528 billion in real estate taxes.

Where did that money come from? Where would it have gone? The simplest answer to those very complicated questions is education. I don't know anyone who can do the math, but with reduced local taxes, control of schools passed to the state Legislature and teachers' unions. California's public schools, once rated the best in the nation, are now among the very worst.

And California, once arguably the best-governed state in the country, has become a place of illiterate children carried in smoky old buses bouncing down rutted roads and streets to classrooms in rented trailers.