SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered a somber State of the State address Tuesday, promising across-the-board spending cuts to tackle a $14 billion budget deficit.

The governor also pleaded again for a constitutional amendment, similar to one voters rejected in 2005, that would cap spending in future lean years.

"The way things are now, when we see a budget problem developing during the year, we don't have a way to stop it," Schwarzenegger said. "We just keep the spending accelerator to the floor. What kind of sense does that make? We need some brakes."

The gloomy fiscal news is likely to dash judicial leaders' hopes that the state would allocate more money in the 2008-09 budget to sweeten judges' pensions, improve the conservatorship system and boost funding for legal programs that serve the poor. The governor will detail his spending cuts, including any slated for the judicial branch and the attorney general's office, when he releases his annual budget on Thursday.

Democratic leaders, who have suggested that the state needs to consider tax increases, immediately criticized the governor's focus on spending cuts.

"Advocating automatic cuts but failing to establish priorities and how to fund them is political expediency at its best and political leadership at its worst," said Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland.

The governor did offer a ray of hope for judicial leaders by touting so-called public-private partnerships as a way to finance billions of dollars in public works projects, including new courthouses.

"In the weeks ahead, I will send you legislation to make these partnerships more available to our state and to our local governments," Schwarzenegger told an audience that included lawmakers, constitutional officers and Chief Justice Ronald George.

Legislation adopted last year gave judiciary officials the go-ahead to leverage public dollars for private investment in a new Long Beach courthouse as a sort of test project. George wants to use such public-private deals to build some of the $10 billion in projects that the Administrative Office of the Courts says is needed. Democrats and public employee groups have opposed such partnerships in the past, however, for fear that they will take jobs away from unionized labor.