LAO, Legislative Budget Committees Release Overviews of Governor’s Proposed Budget

The California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) on Monday released its overview of Governor Gavin Newsom’s FY 2019-20 Budget Proposal. The LAO report assesses the state’s current budget position, discusses the Governor Newsom’s budget priorities and spending proposals, and areas for consideration as the Legislature begins its budget deliberations.

As part of the assessment of the proposed budget, the LAO determines that the governor estimates that the state’s budget position is even better than what the LAO predicted in its November Fiscal Outlook Report. Largely as the result of lower-than-expected spending in health and human services programs, the Newsom Administration has approximately $20.6 billion in discretionary resources to allocate for FY 2019-20. Of that amount, nearly half of those resources are proposed to be dedicated to paying down state liabilities and budgetary debts. Approximately one-quarter of the $20.6 billion is slated for one-time or temporary programmatic spending. Ongoing costs are proposed at $3 billion, an amount the LAO indicates is significantly higher than recent state budgets have allocated. A recent economic growth scenario by the LAO found that $3 billion was approximately the level of ongoing spending that the budget could support, particularly in times of more difficult economic conditions.

The LAO overview goes on to detail proposed spending on state liabilities and debts, programmatic areas, and reserves. The LAO briefly discusses other policy plans outlined in the Newsom Administration’s proposed budget and provides commentary on major proposals related to education, health and human services, housing and homelessness, and disaster response and recovery. The full LAO report on the overview of Governor Newsom’s FY 2019-20 Proposed Budget is available here.

Also, late last week, the California Assembly Budget Committee and Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee released summaries of the governor’s proposed budget. These summaries are intended to provide an overview of the governor’s proposals to legislators and staff and will serve as the basis for budget committee hearings that will occur over the coming months. The Assembly overview is available here and the Senate overview is available here.