Wednesday, November 20, 2013

California budget will have a surplus going forward


San Francisco Chronicle/Melody Gutierrez, staff writer, 11/20/13, "Good news, California:  Surplus is $2.4 billion."

Photo of CA State Capitol
Before - California State Capital
could only afford waterfalls and flowers
You knew I could fix California
"Sacramento -- For the first time in nearly a decade, California is collecting more revenue than it is spending and will finish the fiscal year with an extra $2.4 billion, according to a report released Wednesday by the Legislature's nonpartisan budget analyst.  The good news comes after an era that saw one of the worst budget crises in California history - the fiscal shortfall sank to $60 billion in the 2009-10 budget, the state controller mailed IOUs to vendors in 2009 and state lawmakers slashed programs year after year to make ends meet.
After - newly papered California State Capital

Now, thanks to the passage of Proposition 30 last year and the improving economy, California is looking at surpluses over the next six years - even after the temporary taxes under Prop. 30 expire, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office.

The legislative analyst projected surpluses of $2.4 billion by June 2014 and $5.6 billion by June 2015. Reserves are projected to continue growing to nearly $10 billion by June 2018.  The state this year will spend $96.2 billion in general fund services, which include public education, colleges and universities, prisons and health and human services."   Read article.

Note photographs:  CA Governor Jerry Brown from Daily Kos.com; CA State Capital from CA Dept of Conservation; CA papered State Capital from  Ask CPA Sam.

Posted by Kathy Meeh

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Uh oh. Surplus? They'll be lined up 500 deep around the trough. Of course Pacifica will miss that opportunity, too.

Anonymous said...

Think Jerry's got one term left if he chooses to run. Maybe we should start working on him now to see if he'll come to Pacifica after his term"s) as governor expire. He'll be about 80 by then, maybe a bit older. But think that he just might have the cajones to make those tough economic decisions to enable Pacifica back in the black.

Jerry's a San Francisco kid from the West Portal area ( actually Forest Hills), so a bit of fog shouldn't deter him from heading down our way.

Anonymous said...

So the intern Pacifica city manager was about 80. Plus 80 is the new 60.

Anonymous said...

Mary Ann, will say it is due to the fact they took all the money from Pacifica.

Anonymous said...

They took the money from every city. Time to find another excuse.

Kathy Meeh said...

1040, yes over decades of inaction, its really hard to accept whining from city council members about "the State of CA taking away city money". Whereas the State of CA provided redevelopment money for cities to develop their own city revenue. This city passed.

And what is this city council promoting after their revenue producing tax from the community failed: a community "communications plan". Meantime, what happened to the city council communications plan to hire an economic development director?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I don't get the need for a city communications plan either. How hard can it be to yell abandon ship? They can't even handle that?

Anonymous said...

City Communications Plan? More like Office of Propaganda. Communications sounds so innocuous. It's just another way to con the public into accepting your agenda. Wonder how long it will take before dissent is discouraged in the Trib LTEs, blogs like Fix, council meetings?
This is how it starts.

Anonymous said...

Let's all keep our fingers crossed that blogs such as FixPacifica.com will continue to not censor our freedom of speech. I remember talking to Chris Hunter at the Tribune a few years (or more) back about an interesting story I thought the Tribune might like to run. Chris' suggestion was that i write the story myself in a LTE. It was pretty clear to me that he didn't want to risk stepping on any toes by upsetting the powers that be.

Anonymous said...

Oh golly, Pacifica is going to have an official City Communication Plan. Of course. Seems to me the more that government apes business,
with all its profit-driven tools for selling us all manner of shit, the farther away we get from honest, open government for the people and by the people. What a mockery.

Anonymous said...

Blogmasters, you'll be on the front lines for that battle. Maybe you already are.