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SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The textbooks say California's annual budget is written by the Legislature and signed into law by the governor. But the reality is far more complex, and this year's struggle over the overdue $75 billion spending plan is a case in point: Politics, not policy, rules the roost.

The crucial pieces of California's spending blueprint are not crafted in the Legislature by the fiscal committees, then sent to the floors for votes, although this is the public's perception that politicians like to perpetuate. Rather, they are written behind the closed doors of the governor's office by the governor and the top two leaders of each house.

The process began under former Gov. George Deukmejian and has become a fine art under current Gov. Pete Wilson.

The private meetings of the top leaders -- referred to in the Capitol as the "Big Five" or "El Cinco Grande" -- were once considered emergency sessions, held only when the members in both houses were unable to reach a budget compromise. But in recent years, these meetings have become almost institutionalized, representing the culmination of months of partisan budget negotiations.

Not only is California's budget routinely late, it is increasingly negotiated in secret. This, for the public, is the ultimate outrage: A public document affecting 33 million Californians, the single most important piece of legislation emerging from the Capitol in the course of the year, is put together in secrecy, emerging to the light of day only when it goes before lawmakers for a vote.

Interestingly, crafting a budget has a long history steeped in secrecy. Until the 1970s, California's two-house budget conference committee -- the panel that writes the final budget version for votes on the floors of the Assembly and Senate, met in secret. Its deliberations finally became public after reporters complained long and loudly.

And the budget by far is more a political, rather than a fiscal, document. Politicians in public love to describe the budget as the equivalent of the family checkbook, but this is far from the truth. The budget rests on a myriad of projections and political objectives. This year, the crucial debate is over how to spend an estimated $4.4 billion in new revenue, money that comes from tax receipts generated by California's booming economy. Democrats and Republicans agree that a tax break should be approved, but they disagree on the amount.

Thus, as California moves toward its third week without a budget, the dispute is focusing on a few hundred million dollars, between 1 and 2 percent of the total spending plan.

At the close of the 90-minute "Big Five" meeting on Saturday, Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa described the negotiators' mood as "giddy."

If past years are any guide, that euphoric mood will soon disappear.

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The obsession of the Times and other media with Prison Reform, scandal and other related items is but one more example of the media advancing an agenda which does not resonate across the general population. Most of the electorate is more concerned with the high costs of operation of the prisons than of any individual rights of prisoners or brutality or the like. In fact, most would rather not even know about mistreatment, other than to ask if it will increase their taxes!

The media, in general, which is usually acknowledged to be liberal- minded, even by the members of the fourth estate themselves, have an incurable need to feel that they are on a crusade for mother, flag and apple pie. Even worse, they are always convinced there is a "cover-up" and that people are busy trying to keep them from finding out the "real truth." In reality, most people are law-abiding and not out to create problems for themselves or others. They just want to get by and collect their pensions without problems, and they do whatever works for them to get there.

The Times has recently controlled its investigative monkeys, but here they go again; I predict this will turn out to be the usual...not much more than we have read so far, and certainly not the "blockbuster" they hope it to be. Next, (Times reporters) will go back to interviewing themselves in order to try to sell more papers.

I am sorry to see Capitol Action Weekly get sucked in by (the Times). Keep your powder dry; this isn't the story of the year.

-Sheldon Sloan