About two years ago, 67 percent of California voters turned out and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace Gray Davis, who, with the Legislature, was spending the state into bankruptcy. The new governor promised to reform state government, restore sound finances, return control to the people instead of special interests and represent all the people. We elected this governor to save our state, and now we need to fully support his doing just that.

During his first full year, the new governor achieved some of his goals, obtaining a modicum of cooperation from the Democrat majorities in the Legislature. But toward its end, he had to threaten to bypass the Legislature by using propositions if lawmakers refused to solve major issues. This resulted in attaining a few more compromised goals but at a cost of increased expenditures.

Many of his supporters believe the governor compromised too much. He supported a $15 billion bond issue to cover most of the Davis deficit and used several accounting gimmicks and borrowings from local government and education funds to cover an estimated $8 billion shortfall in his first budget that began at $96 billion and ended at $106 billion. To get his second budget adopted, which initially called for spending $106 billion, he was forced to increase expenditures to $118 billion. Instead of paying down the debt with an unexpected $3.5 billion revenue increase, it went for more spending, all disappointments to his supporters.

At the beginning of his second full year, which he named the "year of reform," Schwarzenegger proposed five amendments to the constitution to get California's fiscal house in order: a spending cap, government workers pension revisions, teacher merit pay and a tenure change, putting redistricting in the hands of retired judges and reducing expenditures if revenues fail to meet estimates.

The Democrat-led Legislature ignored these proposals and pushed several spending increases as it tried to force tax increases, which the Republicans foiled because a two-thirds vote is required. Negotiations having failed, Schwarzenegger called a Nov. 8 special election to put three measures before the people: spending cap, teacher tenure and redistricting. The other two were withdrawn because of defects but should be resurrected for the next election.

Soon afterward, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez announced that the Democrats would withdraw their demands for spending and tax increases because they feared they would cause more voters to support the governor's propositions, but nothing else was out-of-bounds to stop the governor.

Shortly after the proposition signature drives had begun, the government worker unions aired television ads opposing the governor's reforms. Some of the teachers, firefighters and government workers unions' ads are nonsense; others are gross distortions and obvious lies, but some have been believed because the governor's ratings have dropped markedly. Democrats have the audacity to accuse the governor of "unfair and illegal" raising of funds he needs to counter the unions' multimillions for negative TV advertising.

Still "not getting it," legislators recently raised their annual salaries 12 percent and increased pensions for safety workers to 100 percent of their highest pay including overtime.

Between the year 2000 and today, pension liberalizations have increased state, county and city pension costs as much as 400 percent. Clearly, this is unjustified and not affordable. The governor has promised the corrected pension reform measure will appear on the first 2006 election ballot.

There will be other propositions on the November ballot -- one particularly important for reforming Sacramento. A prohibition on spending union dues for political purposes without members' explicit permission, which would help to undo the union coalition's deleterious control of California.

War has been declared between the government worker unions and the rest of the people of California. It's not that government safety workers and others are unimportant, should not be adequately compensated and their families protected. But they work for the people; the people do not work for them.

It may not yet be widely realized that this is a battle for the very soul and fiscal survival of California. If these reforms and others next year are not adopted, there will be little chance to stop the complete socialization of California, transferring ever more wealth from the productive to the non-productive, a deteriorating business climate, more environmental extremist economic damage and the increasing departure of affluent families who pay most of the taxes.

The government workers unions will turn out to vote, and the rest of the voters had better turn out to counter the unions' "buying" themselves ever more increases in pay and benefits. We elected a new governor to correct California's problems. Now we must help him accomplish what we elected him to do.

Stan Katten is a former RAND Corp. analyst and a San Pedro resident.