California’s economic engine will continue to hum in the coming years, allowing the state to ring up a series of multibillion-dollar budget surpluses and build rainy-day reserves, the Legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal analyst projected Wednesday.
The upbeat assessment of state finances by the Legislative Analyst’s Office moves the state further beyond the up-and-down budgets of the 1990s and 2000s and the deep recession-era shortfalls of several years ago. The projections, though, could complicate efforts by multiple trade organizations, unions and other interests to qualify November 2016 ballot measures that impose billions of dollars in new taxes.
Doctors and the largest health care workers union have been cleared to collect signatures to qualify a measure to raise tobacco taxes. Two other proposals would continue versions of the Proposition 30 income tax increases passed three years ago to pay for school and health care programs. And various nonprofits have started circulating petitions to qualify a measure imposing a tax surcharge on multimillion-dollar properties to pay for anti-poverty efforts.
View Article