One day after putting to bed another budget, California’s political leaders began mulling ways to fix a “fatally broken” spending schedule that tends to keep them up late at night — sometimes until the crack of dawn, the Sactamento Bee reports.

Senate Democratic leader Don Perata is asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to convene a bipartisan budget revision panel to develop a multiyear plan to restore on-time budgets. In a letter sent Wednesday, he said leaders needed to decide on the state’s core responsibilities and get revenue in line with expenditures.

“The panel’s objective shall be to propose changes necessary to align the state budget with contemporary fiscal and political realities, and the expectations of those we serve,” Perata wrote in his letter circulated in the Capitol. The panel would include the four legislative leaders, the governor’s finance director and the legislative budget analyst.

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