Brown unveils ‘good news’ budget
By Josh Richman, Jessica Calefati and Tracy Seipel, San Jose Mercury News
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown said today that his revised budget proposal is “good news for California,” paying down $11 billion in debt while for the first time setting the state “on a plan to fully fund our teachers’ pension system.”
But saving money for harder times remains a priority, he said. Brown stood flanked by charts, one of which showed that “balanced budgets have quickly been followed by huge deficits” and the other depicting how unpredictable capital-gains tax revenue — one of the state’s most important and most volatile funding sources — can be from year to year.
“Most of that is paid by the most fortunate among us,” Brown said. “That variability has to be captured in the rainy-day fund.”
And costs of new Medi-Cal enrollment under the nation’s new health care law increased by $1 billion just from January to May, Brown noted. That, he said, is another argument for having deep reserves.