About $467 million of the $560 million increase covers raises already scheduled for many union-covered employees, exempt state managers and supervisors, said Nick Schroeder, who tracks state employee costs for the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The balance would go to medical-benefit cost hikes and other anticipated employee-expense increases.
Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled a spending plan Friday that restores few recession-era spending cuts to social services, with schools and a voter-approved rainy day reserve benefiting the most from robust revenue growth in recent months.
California public schools and community colleges will reap the lion’s share of revenues from a booming economy, with their budgets growing by $7.8 billion this year and next, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed Friday.
Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today proposed a carefully balanced budget that injects billions of dollars more into schools and health care coverage, holds college tuition flat and delivers on Propositions 1 and 2 by investing in long overdue water projects and saving money, while continuing to chip away at the state’s other long-term liabilities – debt, infrastructure, retiree health care and climate change.
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown cautioned against “exuberant overkill” on spending when he released his $164.7-billion budget proposal for 2015-16 on Friday, but pressure already is mounting in the Democratic-controlled Legislature to offer more state assistance to Californians struggling financially..
California income and corporation tax collections surged in December, pushing estimated tax revenue since July to about $3.6 billion above what lawmakers projected when they approved the current budget, according to preliminary totals compiled by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.
A state-mandated schedule for replenishing California’s cash-strapped teachers’ retirement fund means school districts will see their pension contributions triple by 2021 and remain high for decades, according to budget forecasts released this month by several local districts.
Administrators say they’re at a loss for how they’ll come up with the cash, which for some districts could be tens of millions per year. The forecasts come just six months after a legislative deal was struck by Sacramento lawmakers to recover billions of dollars for the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or CalSTRS.
In June 2014, the Legislature directed the LAO to prepare a report analyzing the costs, benefits, and trade-offs of various options for a state earned income tax credit (EITC) that would supplement the federal credit. This report discusses considerations for adopting a state EITC and provides three options for the Legislature’s consideration.
Hertzberg’s tax increase — introduced as SB 8 immediately after he was sworn in Dec. 1 — actually is long-needed tax reform, the kind that causes most politicians to avert their eyes.
The measure finally would extend the state sales tax to services, the fastest growth sector of California’s economy.
Two major contributors to the decline in total revenues were employee retirement revenue, which includes earnings on investments and contributions, (dropping 67.7 percent, from $533.3 billion to $172.0 billion) and interest earnings (falling 44.6 percent, from $91.9 billion to $50.9 billion).
But while San Jose and other cities will never literally reach a single employee who sits in the room mailing out pension checks, the trajectory is headed in that troubling direction. One city manager even quipped to a newspaper a few years ago that cities are becoming pension providers that offer a few public services on the side.
A steadily improving economy will buffer California’s budget from a drop in revenue expected when temporary tax hikes begin to expire in the coming years, the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office said Wednesday. . . The expiring tax increases “will not necessarily cause a sudden revenue drop off – a `fiscal cliff’ – for the annual state budget process,” Taylor said.
California’s general fund will take in $2 billion more in revenue through June than lawmakers expected when they approved the current budget plan, the Legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal analyst said Wednesday, yet all of the increase will be absorbed by the state’s voter-approved constitutional school-funding guarantee.
Those unfunded liabilities – in effect, long-term debts – will haunt state and local governments for decades as other forms of public spending are squeezed to cover the immense pension gap, even if those in charge are loath to admit it.
Tax revenue to California’s general fund is running more than $1 billion above estimates since the July 1 start of the fiscal year, the state said Monday, as Gov. Jerry Brown prepares for another round of budget talks next year.