I can save the state of California about $1.1 million every month.

Well, I can save that much every month the state goes without a budget, like our brilliant legislators are managing to do right now.

How can I reach a seven-figure savings? By applying some of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s logic to state elected officials, including Arnold himself.

Schwarzenegger is going to cut the pay of about 200,000 state employees down to the Federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour.

Hey Arnie, if it is good enough for the workers, make it good enough for the bosses instead.

Yep, apply the Federal minimum wage to each state legislator and the upper echelon of people like Arnie, Attorney General (and former Governor Moonbeam) Jerry Brown and the rest.

As nerdy as it sounds, I sat down and did the math, finding the monthly salary for each of the 132 elected officials and coming up with their hourly wage for the month of July. I then reduced that salary down to $6.55 per hour, coming up with the hourly difference in pay.

I multiplied that difference by an eight-hour workday, finding the state would save $518 a day making Schwarzenegger work for minimum wage, with Brown taking home $443.04 less per day, down to a daily savings of $260 per person for the 115 state legislators who don’t have an extra title (Speaker Pro Tem, etc.) with their name.

The total savings for the month of July 2008 — a time the state has operated without a budget — came to $1,123,913.68.

Yep, slightly more than $1.2 million, give or take a few cents due to my somewhat limited math skills.

I can’t take credit for the idea, however, as it came from my wife as we drove to Sacramento late Thursday afternoon. She tossed out the idea of making those we elected work for minimum wage, then went a step further with an idea I’ll toss out here.

What do you think? Should this be a ballot initiative so voters can force legislators to work for minimum wage each and every time they fail to pass a state budget on time?

Can you see how fast a balanced budget would be available if the members of the state assembly and senate knew there would be hundreds of dollars deducted from their pay each day they failed to do one of the jobs we elected them to accomplish?

Let’s add one extra item here too. The elected officials do NOT get their pay differential back once a budget gets signed. They forfeit that amount of pay for failing to come up with a budget on time.

OK, who is going to get the petitions started to get this on a 2009 ballot?

Dan Ross is the Register’s Multimedia Producer. He writes on local, state and national issues when he’s not moderating blog comments or shooting videos at the Raiders camp. He can be reached at dross@napanews.com or 256.2264.