California lawmakers passed a spending plan for the coming fiscal year Thursday, meeting the state’s budget approval deadline with a $183.2 billion package that raises school funding, expands a tax credit for the working poor and gives the Capitol a greater say over University of California finances.
The main budget bill passed the Senate 28-10 and the Assembly 59-20 several hours later.
Thursday’s votes come nearly a week after the Democrat-controlled Legislature’s budget-writing panel forwarded a plan reflecting agreement with the Brown administration on a range of issues. A final pact followed a few days later when lawmakers and Brown came to terms on how to spend revenue from a 2016 ballot measure that raised tobacco taxes.
“This is a budget for all Californians,” said Senate Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles. “It protects our state’s fiscal stability while also making historic investments in education and our state’s infrastructure, both which are critical to keep our economy moving and growing.”
Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount, said the plan “does things for people, not to people. With this budget, we will protect what we have gained and we will persist in moving forward.”
Minority Republicans were unable to stop the budget’s approval, but slammed its contents and the process.
Senate Republican Leader Patricia Bates criticized the budget as the “biggest in California’s history.”
Republican lawmakers repeated long-standing complaints that other bills in the package, which are theoretically meant to carry out the provisions of the main spending bill, often create major policy in their own right.
These were among those measures accompanying the budget:
▪ Legislation to curtail the state Board of Equalization’s power passed both houses despite a last-ditch pushback from opponents that included oil companies, unions and small businesses.
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