California Governor Gavin Newsom presented his proposed 2024-2025 budget Wednesday and started off by claiming that the state’s not actually facing a $68 billion shortfall, that according to his office the state faces a $37.9 billion shortfall, and tsk-tsk’ing journalists who cited the December number from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Yeah, that’s so much better.
During his presentation Newsom announced that he plans to use $10.4 billion from the state’s rainy-day fund and $2.7 billion from other reserves to partially close that gap, but in order to use the rainy-day fund Newsom has to declare a budget emergency. Now, the term “emergency” implies something unforeseen; California had large surpluses in 2021-22 and 2022-23, but Newsom and the Democrat supermajority…
