Capitol Weekly’s Top 100: Joe Stephenshaw

No. 2 Joe Stephenshaw

California’s budget is an annual exercise in chaos. There is either a surplus that lawmakers and the governor are foaming at the mouth to get their hands on or a deficit they are doing their best to pretend doesn’t exist – or at least doesn’t apply to their pet projects. There is rarely anything in between, something California Department of Finance Director Joe Stephenshaw knows as well as anyone. As the governor’s top budget advisor, Stephenshaw deals every day with the intense pressure that comes with managing our state’s finances. That intensity was cranked up to eleven this year as the state started out with a budget hole roughly the size of the Mariana Trench. Not fun when you work for an outgoing governor looking to leave things tidy as he starts a presidential campaign. But then one would think Stephenshaw’s years serving as a legislative budget consultant – including as Staff Director for the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee from 2017 to 2022 – prepared him for dealing with the epic fluctuations of California’s tax revenues. After that, dealing with a highly ambitious, often prickly and always demanding boss must seem like a big nothingburger.

Updated Aug. 11, 2026