03/28/2024

News

California Transportation Infrastructure Priorities: Vision and Interim Recommendations

The California State Transportation Agency has released the California Transportation Infrastructure Priorities (CTIP workgroup vision and interim recommendations document. Last year’s budget directed the new Transportation Agency to work with stakeholders to develop funding priorities and long-term funding options. The workgroup examined the current status of the state’s transportation system and discussed challenges that lie ahead. The interim recommendations offers both a vision for California’s transportation future and a set of immediate action items toward achieving that vision that are centered on the concepts of preservation, innovation, integration, reform and funding.

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February 2014 Cash Report Summary Analysis

California entered the new calendar year with generally good financial news. Total revenues topped estimates for January even though projections were recently revised upward as part of the Governor’s 2014-15 Budget submitted early this year. Overall spending was less than expected.

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The 2014-15 Budget: Overview of the Governor’s Budget

The proposal continues the Governor’s focus on paying down the “wall of debt,” a selection of budgetary liabilities the state incurred in addressing its past budget problems. The Governor’s emphasis on debt repayment is a prudent one. Overall, the Governor’s proposal would place California on an even stronger fiscal footing, continuing California’s budgetary progress.

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Governor Brown Delivers State of the State Address

SACRAMENTO – Committing to “pay down our debts and remember the lessons of history,” Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today delivered his annual State of the State address, highlighting California’s comeback while vowing to establish a solid rainy day fund to help maintain the state’s fiscal stability.

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Gov. Jerry Brown Lays Out Agenda for Year in State of the State Speech

Gov. Jerry Brown took a swipe at California’s critics during his State of the State address to the state Legislature on Wednesday, praising a “California comeback” he said delivered a million new jobs, a budget surplus and higher minimum wage.

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Jerry Brown Lauds California’s “Comeback,” Urges Caution in State of the State Speech

Gov. Jerry Brown said today that California is continuing its “comeback,” with a budget surplus and am improving economy, but he urged the Legislature to restrain spending.

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Dan Walter: Perhaps Brown’s Tax Hike Wasn’t Needed After All

When Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled his proposed 2014-15 budget this month – one based on estimates of sharply increased state revenues – a reporter asked him whether, in retrospect, California needed the tax increase he had persuaded voters to approve in 2012.

Brown’s response, in essence, was that the tax boost’s money is needed to pay off the debts that the state had incurred, not only for past budget deficits, but for long-term future obligations that total about $350 billion.

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2014-15 Budget Summary

The state’s fiscal history is riddled with budgets that made permanent obligations— both spending increases and tax cuts — based on temporary revenue increases. After these spikes in revenues disappeared — as they always do— the state was forced to cut programs and raise taxes. This Budget seeks to avoid this unproductive boom‑and‑bust cycle. Instead of using one‑time revenues to spend on permanent programs, it instead uses that money to make the state’s first deposit into its Rainy Day Fund since 2007, repay money owed to our schools, pay off the Economic Recovery Bonds sold to balance the budget in 2004, and make one‑time investments to shore up the state’s aging infrastructure. This Budget also proposes a constitutional amendment to strengthen California’s Rainy Day Fund so we can pay off our longer term liabilities and be prepared for any future decreases in revenue.

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State Leaders Closely Watch Migrating Millionaires

Mickelson still lives in California, but other wealthy people say they have moved out mainly or partly because of skyrocketing tax rates. Whether you sympathize or not, millionaires’ migrating out of California has serious consequences to the state’s bottom line and is something state leaders are watching closely.

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Dan Walters: Political Struggle Looms Over Redevelopment’s Revival

Meanwhile, legislators who voted to abolish redevelopment have been writing proposals to re-establish it, with changes, under some other name.

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Skepticism Over Brown’s Redevelopment Replacement

Inside the governor’s 2013-14 budget plan is a proposal to make it easier to for voters to implement infrastructure financing districts, which are similar to redevelopment in that they allow local governments to fund public infrastructure through tax increment financing.

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Brown: Thumbs Down on Oil Severance Tax

Gov. Brown summarily rejected the notion of a per-barrel tax on California oil as it comes from the ground, a move that sharply limits the political options of the tax’s backers who hoped to get a bill through the Legislature to raise perhaps $2 billion annually.

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Fun with Numbers — Detalis of Jerry Brown’s Proposed Budget

The governor pegs the total 2014-15 budget of the general fund, special funds and bond funds at $154.9 billion, but the real number is well over $200 billion, when federal funds are included. That’s the equivalent of more than 10 percent of California’s entire economic output.

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Brown Budget Proposes More Spending but Also Fiscal Restraint

Although his proposed budget would raise general-fund spending by more than 8%, to $106.8 billion, he continued to portray himself Thursday as a necessary check on fellow Democrats eager to spend. For example, Brown declined to commit money for universal preschool, one of lawmakers’ top priorities.

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Dan Walters: Brown Wants to Avoid Past Errors in State Budgeting

Brown, citing an ever-increasing dependence on taxes from highly volatile capital gains, said he, too, would resist pressures to ramp up permanent spending and wants to divert much new revenue into paying down debt and building up reserves to cushion future downturns.

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