Posts Tagged: revenues

News

LAO: State faces $25 billion budget hole in 2023-24, and more woe later

The California State Capitol in Sacramento. (Photo: Always Wanderlust, via Shutterstock)

Under our outlook, the Legislature would face a budget problem of $25 billion in 2023‑24. (A budget problem—also called a deficit—occurs when resources for the upcoming fiscal year are insufficient to cover the costs of currently authorized services.) The budget problem is mainly attributable to lower revenue estimates, which are lower than budget act projections from 2021‑22 through 2023‑24 by $41 billion.

News

Bullet train, moving slowly, hits another bump

An artist's rendering of California's proposed bullet train. (Image: High-Speed Rail Authority)

For more than a decade, California’s bullet train has faced obstacle after obstacle. The latest hurdle: the pandemic. Last week, the Authority postponed the approval of its 2020 business plan until Dec. 15 in order to assess the impacts of COVID-19.

Recent News

Pandemic raises stakes on sports gambling measure

Accessing an online sports betting site. (Photo: wavebreakmedia, via Shutterstock)

For the last two years, the legalization of sports wagering in California seemed like a sucker’s bet. A proposed constitutional amendment in the Assembly went nowhere with lawmakers in 2019, and a similar proposal this year was hardly sprinting ahead like Secretariat.  But with the sudden onset of the coronavirus playing havoc with both ballot measures and the state budget, it might be game-on for legalized sports gambling in 2020 after all.

Opinion

The high road: Dismantle the ‘wall of poverty’

A homeless man in Oceanside. (Photo: David Little)

With news this week that California’s tax revenues came in $6-$8 billion stronger than previous estimates, California now has an undeniable choice: a high road that lifts up all our people and strengthens our state, or a low road that ignores the nearly one in four residents who live below the poverty line in the wealthiest state in the nation.

News

Property taxes: The magic bullet for budget stability?

A graph showing the volatility of income tax revenue (solid line). Prperty tax revenue is in blue.(Graphic: LAO)

Could making our state budget more dependent on property tax revenues be the key to eliminating the roller-coaster budgets of the last two decades? Since the early 1990s, we’ve lived through the boom and bust cycles of the California budget. Today, we are more dependent than ever on personal income taxes. And those taxes are more progressive than they have been in years, meaning our economic stability is tied to the fate of the wealthy .

News

Fiscal outlook brighter — but fingers crossed

Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor, the Legislature's nonpartisan fiscal adviser, unveils the latest budget projections. (Photo: AP/Rich Pedroncelli

California, long bedeviled by daunting budget deficits, is likely to end the next fiscal year with $4.2 billion in reserve, with half that amount due to a budget-reform measure that voters approved on Nov. 4, according to the Legislature’s nonpartisan financial adviser.

Opinion

Arts under siege, starved of funding

Street art in Santa Barbara., August 2011. Philip Bird

OPINION: Since 2003, California’s Governors and the Legislature have allocated $1.1 million annually to the Arts Council, the bare minimum necessary to qualify for a $1 million National Endowment for the Arts grant. This lack of foresight has put California dead last among all 50 states in per capita funding for its arts agency.

Opinion

Budget: Time to restore cuts to pre-crisis levels

OPINION: With this proposal, the Governor, who has shown recent leadership in stabilizing revenues and beginning to restore programs cut during the recession, is calling for a restructuring of the state’s existing rainy day fund, known as the Budget Stabilization Account (BSA). (An alternative proposal approved by the Legislature in 2010 is scheduled to appear on the statewide ballot in November.)

News

April tax revenues may be less than hoped

A record $16 billion in income tax revenue will flow into state coffers during April, according to predictions in Gov. Jerry Brown’s January budget plan.

 

About $5 billion of that $16 billion comes from higher taxes approved by voters in November through Proposition 30 — $4.5 billion in taxes owed for 2012 and $500

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