With questions mounting about the legal justification for omitting some $22 billion in expenses from California’s long-standing spending cap, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration dropped the plan Thursday while promising to work on the issue again later this year.
Brown’s advisors told the Assembly Budget Committee that this could include some changes in state law to clarify the rules surrounding what’s known as the “Gann limit,” a cap on state spending growth imposed by voters in 1979. The cap has rarely come into play in state budgeting in recent years, as it was loosened by a subsequent ballot measure in 1990. The governor’s administration said it continues to worry about how the law interacts with other mandates related to school funding.
“School financing has changed significantly since the limit was first established in 1979,” said H.D. Palmer, Brown’s budget spokesman. “Because of that, we continue to believe we need statutory clarifications related to these school funding changes.”
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