SACRAMENTO -- Every summer, it's the singular drama that consumes the state Capitol. For weeks and even months, lawmakers haggle, dicker and struggle toward a two-thirds majority needed to pass a budget.

Yearly, it comes to paralysis, to standoffs and the howls of unpaid vendors. Meanwhile, a handful of holdouts name their price to join the majority: tax breaks for farmers, grants for rural police departments, funds for a veterans home.

Not since 1986 has the Legislature passed its state budget on time.

Now a March ballot measure asks voters to say: enough already.

Proposition 56 would allow the Legislature to pass state budgets with a 55 percent majority instead of two-thirds, which has been the rule in California since a quick-fix ballot measure 71 years ago. The measure, aiming to break a pattern of gridlock, indecision and deficits, also would make lawmakers and the governor work without pay until they produce a budget.

"For 17 years, we've had late budgets. In 17 years, the budget we have hasn't worked," said Robin Swanson, spokeswoman for Proposition 56, which is being pushed by a coalition of public employee unions, health care and good-government groups.

"There are only two other states that have this requirement," she said. "We're setting up these unrealistic expectations, and creating a system that produces gridlock year after year. Whose interest is being served in that?"

Ridding California of its "supermajority" budget vote, a requirement shared nationally only by Arkansas and Rhode Island, has long been a priority for reformers who believe it gives minority dissenters too much power over the state's spending.

Proposition 56 supporters say the two-thirds rule blocks compromise among moderates of both political parties, allows the parties to blame the other without being accountable and often causes higher spending.

Their move comes 3 1/2 years after voters struck down a similar two-thirds requirement -- dating from the mid-1800s -- to pass local school bonds. The new threshold is 55 percent.

But supporters of this campaign, which include the League of Women Voters, California Parent Teacher Association and influential unions putting up big money, have a tougher fight.

A coalition that includes powerful oil, liquor and insurance interests is pouring millions of dollars into a campaign to defeat the initiative. All fear they could become victims of a second key Proposition 56 plank, which allows lawmakers to raise state taxes with a 55 percent vote instead of the two-thirds mandated by 1978's Proposition 13.

Nationally, lawmakers frequently look to liquor, cigarettes and gasoline for new tax revenue. And a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California reports 75 percent of 912 likely voters in California favor higher taxes on liquor and cigarettes.

"We're very tied to the state, and anything that raises the cost of doing business would hurt these companies that provide good-paying jobs," said Victoria Horton, president of California Beer and Beverage Distributors, a trade group that has contributed $247,000 to fighting Proposition 56. Other major contributors include ChevronTexaco Corp., State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. and Anheuser Busch Cos.

"We'd like to have the thoughtful consensus that exists with the two-thirds vote," Horton said. Representatives of State Farm and Chevron Texaco expressed similar sentiments.

Apparently, most voters agree.

The PPIC's January poll of likely voters showed 73 percent call the two-thirds requirement "a good thing." Poll results also revealed that only 41 percent of those surveyed said they would support the March initiative. A January Field Poll of 929 registered voters showed early support at only 37 percent.

On the Net:

Read campaign material by Proposition 56 supporters at www.budgetaccountabilitynow.org

Read material by the measure's opponents at www.noblankchecks.com

View campaign contributors under propositions and ballot measures at www.ss.ca.gov

Read more about the measure at www.voterguide.ss.ca.gov.