The numbers are fairly staggering: If the economy continues its race to the bottom, Utah is going to be at least $850 million short come next year.

With the federal credit card used up and low hanging fruit like increasing vehicle registration fees already picked, lawmakers are looking for ways to balance the $10 billion budget — as mandated by the state’s constitution.

On the table are tax increases on cigarettes and natural resources extracted by corporations, across-the-board cuts and whatever Gov. Gary Herbert’s secretive efficiency committee comes up with.

But those are predictable moves. Isn’t there something out there that’s a little crazy but just might work?

A sampling of Utah lawmakers who wouldn’t mind throwing these ideas against the wall to see what sticks:

John Dougall, R-Highland

• The state has explored the idea of year-round school for years. Dougall, a relentless fiscal conservative, says there may be as much as $150 million in savings by moving to the format. That’s after forking more than $150 million to increase the salaries of teachers willing to work 12 months a year instead of the traditional nine.

The money is saved by using the education system’s massive and expensive infrastructure for the entire year. Year-round school would reduce the number of teachers — if class sizes are kept the same — because fewer students would be in school at the same time. Of course, money savings aside, it would be massively disruptive as parents tried to figure out when they wanted their kids in school, teachers renegotiated contracts, and school officials decided who would be fired.

Rep. Neil Hansen, D-Ogden

• Lawmakers typically pick a dollar figure for departments to hit and let administrators decide where to cut. Hansen, the only Democrat north of Salt Lake City, says it’s time for some serious micromanagement. Lawmakers, he says, could probably find enough “frivolous money” to cover the entire $850 million shortfall if they had access to every detail of state departments. He’s talking about things like: magazine/newspaper subscriptions, funding for license plate covers promoting the state Web site, and perhaps most lucrative of all, funded positions that go unfilled.

He said there’s at least one department he’s aware of that has $300,000 tied up in positions that are currently empty and have been for some time.

“All too often, when we have these big, huge budgets, a lot of it goes unnoticed or unaccounted for,” he said.

• Of course, digging that deep into the guts of government would most likely mean extending the legislative session, which would take a constitutional change. Hansen says it’s worth exploring pushing the session from its traditional 45 days to 60 days or even, and this is really outside the box, 10 days at the beginning of each month. That would allow lawmakers to manage the budget on the fly instead of calling special sessions or waiting an entire year and then going back into the previous year’s budget to make painful changes.

A few others:

• Sen. Luz Robles, D-Salt Lake City, says a constituent recently suggested that if Utah can lease out its west desert for radioactive waste, why not build a federal prison out there? “I thought that was innovative and creative,” Robles says.

• Rep. Craig Frank, R-Pleasant Grove, is big on privatization. Why not corrections or the state mental hospital, he says. And a slightly disturbing suggestion: “Maybe doing a legislators calendar or something. We’ll start with Dougall in January.”