Everyone knows that California is in a deep fiscal crisis and has been running up multibillion-dollar budget deficits, which its politicians have covered over with an imaginative variety of bookkeeping gimmicks and on-and off-the-books loans.

But just how deep is our budgetary hole? The gimmicks make that a very difficult question to answer. Take, for instance, a trick involving the "net operating loss carryforward," which allows corporations to carry forward operating losses from one year into subsequent years to offset profits, thereby lowering their corporate tax bite.

A few years ago, when the state first began to experience fiscal pain (thanks to the politicians' overspending of a one-time windfall of income taxes), Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature suspended the write-offs of business losses for a couple of years, with the proviso that they would be reinstated at a higher rate. It was officially "scored" as a revenue gain for budget purposes, but in fact it was a very short-term, very high-interest loan from corporate California.

Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor on the promise to straighten out state finances and has often alluded to the $22 billion debt he inherited from Davis. He used the figure repeatedly when urging voters to enact a $15 billion bond issue, saying it would refinance much of the debt. But that, too, is a somewhat contrived number, not a hard count of debts actually owed.

It doesn't take into account the secured loans, such as the one taken out - pawned really - against money to be paid to the state over many years by tobacco companies. There are billions of dollars in "loans" from various special funds, most notably transportation accounts, and more billions are owed to school districts and local governments in the form of deferred state aid. Some of the state's labor contracts include clauses that will "backload" their financial impacts, another form of unofficial loan. And the net-operating-loss gimmick, as mentioned earlier, is not even considered to be a loan even though it, in practical fact, is exactly that.

For many of the same reasons, the dimensions of what's termed the "structural deficit" - the more or less permanent yearly gap between income and outgo - are not as clear as they should be because some of the outgo is hidden by accounting tricks, and some of the income merely exists on paper. It's as if the accountants who advised Enron Corp. on overstating assets and revenues and hiding liabilities and expenses made their way to Sacramento to ply their tricky trade.

When Schwarzenegger took office late last year, his budget advisers pegged the deficit the state faced at about $18 billion over the remaining six months of the 2003-04 fiscal year and the 12 months of the 2004-05 fiscal year, $1 billion a month. At least a third of the problem represents Schwarzenegger's reinstatement of the two-thirds reduction in property taxes on cars (vehicle license fees), which was his first act as governor. The rest is part of the gap that first emerged in 2001-02 when the overspending of the one-time income tax windfall hit home, but the official numbers still exclude many off-the-books problems.

The most unvarnished accounting of the fiscal crisis is found in the dry language and stark numbers of a recent report by the state auditor's office.

The report, which officially closes the books on the 2002-03 fiscal year, reveals that true, nongimmicked state revenues during the year - taxes, charges for services, federal funds, interest earnings, etc. - were $124.5 billion. State spending totaled $143 billion for an operating deficit of $18.5 billion, coming on the heels of a $12.2 billion shortfall the year before. When the books are closed on the 2003-04 fiscal year, the state's true deficit over three years of budgetary hide-the-pea may approach $50 billion, well over $1 billion a month.

As the budget deficits mounted, the state's balance sheet suffered mightily, the auditor also reported. During the 2002-03 fiscal year, it found, the state's net worth - all of its assets, including its property holdings, minus all of its liabilities - declined from $4.8 billion to a negative $15.3 billion. If it were a private corporation, California might be headed for bankruptcy court.