LOS ANGELES >> Five weeks after the Legislature passed a budget that promised to close a $19 billion budget shortfall, California has sunk back into yet another fiscal crisis, this time facing a $26 billion gap that is posing a major new challenge for the incoming governor, Jerry Brown, and seems almost certain to force deep cuts in a state already reeling from three years of financial turmoil.

The departing governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has called a special session of the Legislature for Dec. 6 to begin dealing with one part of the problem: a projected $6 billion shortfall in the $126 billion budget passed in October, a record 100 days late. Schwarzenegger’s aides said the governor, a Republican who has fought repeatedly with Democrats in pushing through deep spending cuts, will propose another round of reductions to get the state through the end of this fiscal year in June.

“There’s no more easy stuff to cut,” Susan Kennedy, Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff, said Monday. “We are cutting into bone now.”

California’s outsize budget woes always draw attention. But as the economic downturn grinds on, the state is by no means alone in looking at staggering deficits. Illinois, which has literally been having trouble paying its bills, has a deficit that could swell to $15 billion next year. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey took office this year facing a $10.7 billion gap — more than a third of the state’s projected revenues. Even Texas, which had been weathering the downturn, faces a gap that lawmakers say could top $21 billion over the next two years.

The latest California budget problems — described by officials in both parties as calamitous — confirm what many officials warned when the Legislature voted in October: The gap was closed, in no small part, through the use of budget gimmickry, including overly optimistic estimates of federal revenue. It has been worsened not only by the continued downturn of the economy, but also by initiatives passed by California voters in November that had the effect of increasing the revenue shortfall by $1 billion.

But even beyond the problems of the current fiscal year, state officials have predicted yet another shortfall, of $19 billion, in the budget for the next fiscal year, which Brown must propose in January.

California has a history of recovering from financial crises, riding the wave of a national economic growth to recovery, and that is one reason state leaders frequently turn to stop-gap solutions intended to push the problem up the road.

“They are always hoping that tomorrow is going to be a brighter day — and usually it is,” Robert Stern, director of the California-based nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies, told a reporter. “We’re always bouncing back. We are always written off by you guys, but we always bounce back.”

Still, Stern said, “this is the worst I’ve seen it.”

Indeed, historic resilience in this economically powerful state is being tested as never before, prompting concern that fundamental changes in the state’s economy, combined with a tightening welter of restrictive voter initiatives on legislative decisions about spending and taxing, are thrusting California into an era of long-lasting austerity.

Mac Taylor, the head of the Legislative Analyst’s Office in Sacramento, which issued the latest shortfall projections, said it would be a mistake for legislative leaders to rely on the history of past cyclical economic recovery to rescue the state from this particularly brutal downturn.

“Things are a little different this time,” Taylor said. “I don’t think you are going to find many economists who are expecting any quick bounce back from this recession.”

This latest crisis follows three straight budgets characterized by deep cuts in aid to public education, the state university system and social welfare programs, as well as repeated worker furloughs, as California has tried, in vain, to find its balance.

The options on the revenue side of the ledger are constrained by a California voter initiative that requires a two-thirds vote by the Legislature to raise taxes; that two-thirds requirement was extended to fees in another initiative passed this November. To compound things, Brown, a Democrat, pledged in the campaign not to raise any taxes without voter approval.

Sterling Clifford, Brown’s spokesman, said, “Jerry has met with the legislative leadership and state finance officials. He and his staff have begun working on the budget, and it will be his priority throughout the transition period.”

Leaders of the Legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, made clear they were wary of Schwarzenegger’s promised budget proposals and suggested they were skeptical that much would come out of the special session. In any event, the bulk of the problem is falling to Brown.

“We will look at what Governor Schwarzenegger proposes,” Sen. Darrell Steinberg, the president pro tem of the Senate, said in an interview, adding that he would be inclined to move on to Brown “if it’s the same-old same-old — the elimination of the services for the most needy.”

Speaker John A. Perez noted that Schwarzenegger had removed from the table any discussion of raising revenues.

“It’s always difficult to go into conversations like this when you create a series of preconditions the way the governor has expressed,” Perez said.

If this budget crisis is posing a major problem for Brown, it also seems likely to help define the legacy of Schwarzenegger. He came into office pledging to clean up Sacramento and rein in what he described as budgetary excesses, and he will now be graded, at least in part, for leaving his successor a huge budget deficit.

“That is how he is being judged; it is not fair, but it is what it is,” Kennedy, Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff, said. “He gets credit for the good times, and he is going to get slammed for handing off a deficit. I’m telling you, no one could have done better, no one could have done any different. Any governor would have been handing over a deficit, given the national recession.”

Steinberg said that given all the restrictions the state faced, the best course of action would be a realignment of state services in a way that would require local governments — which might have more flexibility to raise some taxes — to provide them. He said he thought Brown would be more receptive to that kind of restructuring than Schwarzenegger.

“I think the notion of trying to raise state taxes to continue to prop up this system is a dead end,” Steinberg said, adding, “Unless we get the miracle of an economic recovery faster than anyone expects, we have to be bold.”

California has, over the past three years, become accustomed to regular rounds of bad economic news. In this case, however, the level of despair is striking.

“What the new governor would be loath to admit is that California’s fate depends on circumstances beyond his control,” said John J. Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. “If there is a robust national economy, that would go a long way toward easing our problems. But the state of the national economy is not under Sacramento’s control.”

“It’s been a while since they had actual balance,” Pitney said of California. “If this were a private sector company, the governor and the Legislature would have gone to prison a long time ago.”

© 2010 The New York Times Company