Time for UC to Ask for More

In about a month, the governor will put forth his May Revise budget proposal. There is a lot of unexpected money sloshing around in Sacramento at the moment. UC should be asking for more.

The state controller has released her cash statement for the first nine months of fiscal year 2020-21. Revenues for the year have so far run ahead of the estimates made last June to the tune of almost $33 billion. (See table below.) Compared with the estimates made only last January, they are ahead by over $17 billion.

Unused borrowable resources - effectively the cash available to the state - are ahead of last June's estimate by over $26 billion and over last January's estimate by somewhat under $14 billion.

Not surprisingly, much of this unexpected cash comes from the state's progressive personal income tax since it turned out that the pandemic-induced downturn had little effect on the upper-income earners who pay most of that ax. But even sales tax revenue is above forecast levels; folks were buying stuff, or at least those folks who had the resources were buying lots of stuff.

Source: https://www.sco.ca.gov/Files-ARD/CASH/March2021StatementofGeneralFundCashReceiptsandDisbursements.pdf

Apart from the economic news, there is the political reality of the gubernatorial recall election which seems likely to happen in the fall. So, this is a time when the governor and legislature will want to be making folks happy.

Time to ask the governor for more love (and money):

or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvBp_2WGKEU.