Twenty-five billion dollars.  Translation: That’s 29.5 percent of the current $84.5 billion general fund budget.

This may explain why California’s finance director was quoted on Friday as saying that earlier this year he explored the possibility that the state could declare bankruptcy. According to the Wall Street Journal, Michael Genest told a Washington conference: “I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy. I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status.”

BTW, Genest is walking away from his job at the end of the year, having decided there are better ways to make a living than slashing budgets and trying to negotiate with politicians who don’t want to make hard choices.

Meanwhile,  Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged earlier this week that next year’s shortfall will be at least $12 billion, and that was the best-case scenario.

For state and local governments, there will be no happy outcomes here. This is going to be ugly.

Californians are left to hope that these adversities will bring the recognition that fundamental reforms are necessary. The current hodgepodge  of state and local government is bloated, redundant and parochial; it often works at cross purposes; and it’s sinking of its own weight.

In the beginning, local government may have escaped the adversities being visited on the private economy, but it was only a matter of time.

Unfortunately, too many local officials remain in denial, unable or unwilling to catch up to the here and now, unable or unwilling to confront the questions that matter most:

One, in a rapidly changing world, how are they going to promote jobs and economic opportunity for the next generation of county residents?

Two, as government gets smaller – and it will get smaller – how are they going to re-invent local government, maintaining critical services and jettisoning the rest?

Three, what will be the total cost of existing financial obligations – debt, pensions, health care, deferred maintenance – and how do they propose to pay for them?

These are tough issues, but ignoring them won’t make them go away. Ignoring them will only make solutions more difficult.

In case you were hiding out, here’s some of the unhappy news of recent days:

-The Santa Rosa City Council must identify another $8 million to $10 million in spending cuts. This comes only months after the city made $26 million in reductions and eliminated the jobs of 97 city employees. Additional shortfalls are projected in the out years.

-The Santa Rosa Board of Education faces a $5.6 million shortfall in 2010-2011 and a $4.7 million shortfall in 2011-2012. All of the options – shortening the school year, increasing class sizes, eliminating librarians – will make it more difficult for local kids to be successful.

-The county library system will close all 13 libraries during the Christmas holidays. School kids on vacation will have to fend for themselves.

-The Petaluma City Council, which reduced spending by almost $4 million in June, must now identify another $2.2 million in budget cuts.

Note to council:  It might help if you cut down on the number of times the Police Department must respond to City Council meetings. Last week, the cops were called after a shouting match between Mayor Pam Torliatt and former Councilman Bryant Moynihan.

Here was the perfect metaphor for local politics in recent years: Two longtime political rivals shouting at each other.

Meanwhile, Santa Rosa City Manager Jeff Kolin found a way out of this mess. As City Hall girded for another round of budget cuts, he accepted the job as the city manager of Beverly Hills, a smaller city with a larger budget.

Goodbye, Santa Rosa Avenue. Hello, Rodeo Drive.

And who can blame him? City politics is plagued by ancient rivalries, and the current council seems to drift from one issue to the next, with no clear idea of how to get the city moving again.

If it chooses, local government can blame its troubles on a faltering economy and on the serial dysfunctions of state government. But local government is not blameless, and it doesn’t matter anyway. Local officials can choose to play the victim, or they get about the business of solving problems.

Here it is: In a global economy, Sonoma County isn’t guaranteed the middle-class prosperity it enjoyed a decade ago – especially if the usual suspects remain wedded to the knee-jerk responses of the old politics.

During last week’s work session on the city’s budget crisis, Santa Rosa Vice Mayor Marsha Vas Dupre raised the specter of new hillside development.

What does a budget crisis have to do with hillside development?

Vas Dupre worries that if the city pursues efforts to promote new jobs, runaway development will follow.

The idea that city must choose between (a) economic stagnation, or (b) destroying the environment makes no sense. But so it goes at City Hall.

Incidentally, the council was told last week that in the quarter ending October 1, the city issued four – yes, four – residential building permits. So much for runaway growth.

In the short term, we can expect local officials to explore budget solutions that may or may not make sense from a public policy standpoint.

A Santa Rosa City Council that once viewed competitive bidding as a way to save rate payers millions of dollars may automatically renew its contract with the current garbage hauler because the deal would be worth $1.7 million a year.

Petaluma is talking to a developer who would advance the city $1 million in fees in return for permission to build a shopping center.

The Santa Rosa Board of Education is talking about dipping into reserves, hoping that that better days are ahead. They had better come soon.

In tough times, organizations do what they can.

It remains that state and local government are laboring under the weight of a decade of short-term decisions with long-term consequences. Like it or not, the moment of reckoning isn’t far away. Communities can confront the hard choices – or accept the inevitability of economic stagnation.

By now, the futility of California government has become the story line of our time – an era marked by partisan paralysis, chronic budget deficits and a general ineptitude when it comes to responding to the state’s most critical needs.

Within the existing structure of government, no governor can succeed without some help from the state Legislature, and the Legislature is a walking, talking disaster. Its current approval rating is 13 percent, and the word most often used to describe it proceedings is “dysfunctional.”

Who would want to be governor? The leading Democratic candidate is Jerry Brown, who was first elected to statewide office in 1970.

I would like to say that.

But as I read “The Reconstruction of American Journalism” – which is nothing if not long – I kept thinking to myself: All this blah-blah-blah is giving me a headache.

At “Silicon Alley Insider,” financial writer Henry Blodget almost got it right when he asked: “Can’t we please stop whining about the death of journalism already?”

But then Blodget retreated to the simplistic pose so popular among folks who have found a small niche on the Internet. This report isn’t about journalism, he proclaimed. It’s just newspaper people who want the world to stop changing.

On the same morning, the New York Times announced it was eliminating 100 jobs in its newsroom.

This is why it is so difficult to have an intelligent conversation about the future of news reporting.

Newspaper people keep complaining about the impacts of technological change – as if someone will make it go away.

And Internet people keep pretending nothing will be lost if news companies don’t have the resources to report the major stories that are vital to a functioning democracy.

Blodget trotted out the usual examples: Facebook and Twitter brought us images from the protests in Iran and evidence of corporate abuses here at home.

Yes, technology creates countless opportunities to share information in ways we’re only beginning to understand.

What Blodget didn’t mention are the stories that aren’t being reported because news organizations are shrinking. From Baghdad to Washington to Sacramento, news bureaus are being shuttered. Teams of investigative reporters are being disbanded. In every town in America, there are fewer journalists to report on what’s being decided today and tomorrow and the next day by elected officials, bureaucrats and business leaders.

In a coherent conversation, defenders of the newspaper and defenders of the Internet would want an economic model that captures the best of both worlds – consistent and focused news reports from professional journalists and the wide world of news and opinion made possible by the Internet.

But they choose instead to live in silos, confined by their own narrow perspectives.

When the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism commissioned a prominent newspaper editor and a prominent academic to write about the future of journalism, some anticipated they would show the way.

There is no doubt that Leonard J. Downie Jr., former executive editor of the Washington Post, and Michael Schudson, a professor at the Columbia J-school, understand the challenge. Here’s what they wrote last week in a Washington Post commentary:

“News reporting that holds accountable those with power and influence has been a vital part of American democratic life, especially in places with daily newspapers profitable enough, and with owners public-spirited enough, to maintain substantial reporting staffs. That journalism is now at risk . . .”

But their report concludes with a grab bag of recommendations that reads more like concessions to an uncertain future.

News organizations should be supported by local nonprofits, they say. Never mind that many nonprofits are struggling to survive on revenues that wouldn’t pay a fraction of the cost of the average newsroom.

News organizations should be subsidized by government under rules that prevent political meddling, they say. Never mind that government is broke. Never mind that politicians and bureaucrats would still find ways to dictate what was and wasn’t reported.

I know. News organizations make mistakes. They can be biased, arrogant and lazy.

But the old newspaper model – supported by revenues from advertising and subscriptions – still pays the bills for an astonishing mix of news, information and entertainment that comes your way every day.

In the chaos of new technology, we now are obliged to find a new economic model.

But we also know that certain kinds of information can never be free.

The best and most reliable journalism is the work of experienced people – reporters, opinion writers, editors, photographers, artists, researchers and more – given the time and supported by an organization dedicated to preparing a daily report on the world in which we live.

Newspaper and Internet, they do it every day, not just when the spirit moves.

I don’t know whether Americans are willing to find a new way to pay for quality journalism, but I know it won’t happen through hand-outs from nonprofits and from government. That’s a prescription for a half-starved journalism, subject to political manipulations of all kinds.

Once this economic recession passes, we will have a better understanding of this changing landscape. Without journalists with the resources to do their jobs, our democratic traditions will be in trouble. Some would say they already are.

Note: If you’re up to it, you can read the entire report here.

Meanwhile, a funny thing happened this past week: It rained, and the lawn that wouldn’t die turned green again. I wouldn’t say it is pristine – there are still bald patches – but at a distance, you can hardly tell the difference.

This is not a long-term solution – green, then brown, then green again. Before next summer, we will likely replace the lawn with landscaping that uses less water.

But the experiment confirms that when it comes to water conservation, people do have options.

Once upon a time, people moved to California to escape places with cool, wet weather year-round – and then adopted a landscaping style borrowed from places with cool, wet weather year-round.

That was OK when water was cheap, but going forward, it won’t be.

To protect endangered fish, the federal government will continue to impose limits on water flows in the Russian River and its tributaries. Climate change will provide new incentives for reducing the energy costs associated with moving water from one location to another. And then there is the D-word: drought.

Californians who want to maintain their verdant lawns and English gardens through the long, dry summer will get used to spending a lot of green on their monthly water bills. Or they will seek a landscaping style that respects the natural surroundings.

Try doing all that with the phone book.

Zagat costs a few bucks, but other applications – Yelp, Local Picks, UrbanSpoon and more – offer some of the same features at no cost. AroundMe will tell me where to find the nearest ATM, coffee house, gas station, hospital and pharmacy. Such aps as Showtimes will list the movies showing near me, tell me where and when, and show me the trailer as well.

If you don’t want a phone that is linked to government satellites, this may not be for you. But the rush of information made possible by GPS – the Global Positioning System – is amazing. It also save times, reduces hassles and finds what you need.

And GPS-based mapping systems may save you the embarrassment of getting lost – or the bother associated with folding that darned map so it fits in the glove box.

Built on what was once an elevated railway, the High Line In New York City now stretches 22 blocks from the West Village to Chelsea. Thirty-feet in the air, locals (and visitors, too) stroll through what were once old and beat-up industrial neighborhoods. Now they’re gentrifying with posh hotels, condominiums and office buildings (including one designed by the architect Frank Gehry). The first phase of the High Line opened in June.

Trees, grasses, places to sit and relax, design elements borrowed from its days as a rail line – all these improvements make the High Line a wonderful way to move from one neighborhood to another, or just to hang out on an afternoon.

Too bad, I thought to myself, this isn’t an idea worth taking home to Sonoma County.

But wait. Some of the county’s best-known walking, running and cycling trails follow the rights-of-way of abandoned rail lines. And plans call for a trail to parallel Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit, stretching from Cloverdale to Larkspur in Marin County.

Big and small, successful cities are defined by their willingness to pursue innovation in design, especially when it comes to creating welcoming public spaces. It’s true in New York City, and it’s true in places we call home. Think of the square in Healdsburg, or the plaza in Sonoma. Think of efforts in Sebastopol and Windsor to create their own town squares. Think of Santa Rosa’s endless conversation about the re-unification of Old Courthouse Square.

When attractive public spaces bring people together, good things happen.

For photos and other information on the High Line, go to www.thehighline.org.

NEW YORK

Friends here ask whether California will be OK. They have read the news about a state that seems to be spiraling downward, and they worry. In the American mythology, the Golden State has always been the place that promises new possibilities, which means that even New Yorkers want the best for their West Coast rival.

It is not just the economy. California, New York or Montana, Americans are making do in hard times.

What’s different about California is the abundant evidence that state government is brain-dead when it comes to responding to a world that is changing.  From chronic budget deficits to prison overcrowding to water shortages to failing schools to proposals to shutter state parks, the news from California is usually bad.

For a proud Californian, this question – will California be OK? – is tough to answer. You want to be hopeful, but no one has offered a sure way out of this disaster.

Over the decades, state government has expanded into what one state lawmaker described as the Winchester Mystery House of governments. Take a government structure designed to solve 19th century problems. Add a layer here and a layer there and another layer over there. Toss in a ballot measure, or 50, and the most convoluted tax laws in America. Pretty soon, you have a framework of state and local government that can’t get out of its own way.

The County of Sonoma recently decided to surrender control of the county’s only landfill rather than deal with a single-purpose regulatory agency. Couldn’t two government agencies work out their differences for the good of the public at large? Apparently not.

At the moment, calls for a constitutional convention represent California’s  only hope for a solution. Unfortunately, there are many ways that a constitutional convention can run off the rails. If the same interest groups responsible for maintaining the current dysfunction hold sway at a convention, the state could end up in a worse place – with an electorate even more disillusioned.

At a recent gathering of reformers, everyone agreed that reform was essential, but there was no agreement about what those reforms should be. Some seek incremental changes, and some want to start with a blank sheet.  How about a single-house legislature with smaller districts? Why not consolidate – or abolish – counties? The lists go on.

No one will put state government back together again so long as the hard-right factions in the Republican Party and the public employees unions and their allies in the Democratic Party can trump the views of a majority of voters. For me, that means two fundamental changes:

One, establish open primaries that could elect candidates that aren’t hooked to the short leash held by narrow interests.  State voters will get the chance next year.

Two, eliminate the requirement that a state budget can only be passed by  two-thirds majorities in each house of the legislature.

Yeah, I know. Conservatives think this protects them from higher taxes.

But not even the most conservative, anti-tax  states in the nation see the wisdom of two-thirds majorities to pass a budget. The current arrangement is anti-democratic, and it doesn’t protect California from big spenders. It only guarantees that state government will continue to be paralyzed and deficit-ridden.

Unfortunately, there is zero chance that state voters will agree. Voters who don’t trust their political institutions continue to prefer political paralysis, even if it means long-term economic stagnation.

The recent unveiling of an ambitious plan to rewrite the state tax code provides the latest evidence.  Whatever one thinks of the specific proposals offered up by the Commission on the 21st Century Economy, it is a truism that the crazy-quilt of tax laws that now controls the state’s economy is a form of idiocy.

The heavy reliance on the income tax guarantees wild swings in revenue. Without an independent source of revenue, local government remains at the mercy of an isolated and erratic state government. And cities’ dependence on sales taxes forces them into destructive land-use decisions, simply because they need the revenue generated by sprawling shopping complexes.

But any attempt to change tax laws is easily shot down by opponents who play to the popular cynicism. In this instance, business groups attacked the proposal for a net receipts tax, and labor groups attacked the proposal for lowering income tax rates, and the plan was, for all intents and purposes, dead on arrival.

When New Yorkers ask about California, I tell them that this is the crux of the problem: Voters are cynical because government is dysfunctional, and government is dysfunctional because voters are cynical.

So, my New York friends ask, maybe one of your new crop of gubernatorial candidates can put California together again?

It would be pleasant to think so, but even if these new candidates were gifted leaders – and they’re not – the problems are systemic.

Not so long ago, a popular non-politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger, rode into town on a promise to make it all right, but he didn’t account for the fact that nothing else had changed.

And nothing else did change. The same politicians controlled by the same special-interest groups continue to wage partisan warfare while the walls are collapsing all-around them. And we are stuck with the same hodge-podge of government agencies, which are redundant and wasteful, and often work at cross-purposes.

So, here we are. There is always hope, I tell New Yorkers. I’m just not sure where to find it. Maybe a constitutional convention will work. Maybe.

Now comes the Wall Street Journal with a Sept. 19 special report on suburban towns’ rush to become more accommodating to an aging population. “That sense of urgency is understandable,” said the journal, “The nation’s sprawling suburbs – home to as much as half of the U.S. population and more than 30 million people age 55-plus – may have been a good place to grow up. But the suburbs are proving a tough place to grow old.”

This change in living patterns offers the opportunities for cities to transform themselves, but first they must provide what these baby boomers now want – pedestrian-oriented streets and greenways, parks, and condominiums in the place of large-lot, single-family homes.

Keep in mind that living on a smaller scale is not just about saving money and reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gases.

“Maintaining yards and homes requires more effort; driving everywhere, and for everything, becomes expensive and, eventually, impossible,” the Journal reported. “(Research shows that men and women who reach their 70s, on average, outlive their ability to drive by six and 10 years, respectively.)”

In my earlier post, I quoted Christopher B. Leinberger, professor of urban planning at the University of Michigan. Writing in The Atlantic magazine, he reported that families with children once made up more than half of all households. Now they represent less than a third of the households and by 2025, only about one in four households will be families with children.

“For 60 years,” wrote Leinberger, “Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue.“

Still, this reworking of existing technologies reminds us again that communication and journalism are being transformed. On my phone, I’m watching a video posted a few minutes ago by a guy half-way around the world. The video shows flooding caused by the tsunami that followed a 7.9 earthquake in the Samoa Islands. The video, presumably shot on a mobile device, was posted using CNN’s new iReport feature, which invites people to upload news and video.

From a protest in Iran to a natural disaster in American Samoa, it’s not difficult to imagine the benefits of this new citizen journalism. On the other hand, it’s not difficult to imagine the abuses either.

It doesn’t matter. We won’t unring the bell. For better and worse, the rush of technology will continue to change how we live. We’ll just have to manage as best we can.

The CNN application also becomes the latest test of whether people are willing to pay for online news. There are costs associated with the gathering and the delivery of the news, whether it’s in your neighborhood or on the far side of the world. It will be one of those times when you get what you pay for.