Re:
Just pass a ballot proposition that limits the increase in state spending each year to the following formula:

CPI + (Estimated) Population Change (%)

It’s not perfect, but it would essentially keep state spending per capita constant in real dollars (roughly, that is). Had we done this a decade ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Washington voted on a similar proposition yesterday, and the vote tally so far has it failing. The difference in WA was that it would limit state revenue growth rather than spending growth (to CPI+population). Any revenue above that would have been used to lower property taxes. The interesting thing is that it appears to have failed even in the conservative counties east of the Cascades.

For what it’s worth, public employees in my profession and experience level make about 40% more than their private sector counterparts in raw salary; I’m not even counting the extra benefits like retirement pay. I’d vote for something along the lines of public salary=private salary*frac, where frac could be negotiated by profession but ideally around 0.8 to account for the retirement perks.