The court-appointed receiver who oversees medical care in California's prisons asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday to invoke his emergency powers to provide $7 billion to improve inmate care.

Court-appointed receiver J. Clark Kelso has been given broad authority by federal courts to fix the nation's largest state prison system's medical and mental health care, treatment so poor it has been ruled unconstitutional.

Kelso and the Legislature, however, have been unable to agree on where the funding to fix it should come from. The state Senate has blocked borrowing that Kelso says he needs to fix medical care for the state's more than 170,000 prisoners.

If the receiver doesn't get his way, a judge could order the money taken directly from the state treasury.

To avoid that, Kelso wants the governor's office to bypass the Legislature and sign a contract authorizing up to $7 billion for the medical care expansion. The money would go toward seven health care centers that would house 10,000 inmates in need of medical attention and mental health treatment.