We're not in the room where it happens sadly. But as we posted yesterday, today the legislature must pass what purports to be the budget or lose a day's pay for each day they don't. So, they will. But as we also noted, (Democratic) legislative leaders and Gov. Newsom will continue negotiating. At the macro level, the budget eventually enacted by July 1 will look much like the May Revise with tweeks. There may well be some mid-course corrections as the revenue situation becomes clearer throughout the year.
The LA Times ran a piece on the differences between what the governor proposed and the legislature wants:
The legislative budget plan increases funding for education, child care, public transit and Medi-Cal over levels Newsom proposed in his revised budget in May. It also reverses Newsom’s plan to spend $450 million from the Safety Net Reserve, an account created to shore up funding for programs such as CalWorks and Medi-Cal during a downturn.
Other areas that need to be ironed out with the governor include:
Child care: Lawmakers want to provide $1 billion in temporary rate increases for child care providers. The legislative agreement rejects the governor’s proposal to delay opening subsidized child care for 20,000 additional kids and instead releases the slots on July 1, 2024.
Health care: Newsom and lawmakers are in agreement about using a tax on managed healthcare organizations, known as the MCO Tax, to fund Medi-Cal at a time when the state is expanding eligibility to all immigrants who qualify regardless of immigration status. But the two sides disagree over the timeline to spend the money. The governor wants to spend the tax revenue over eight to 10 years, while lawmakers are pushing to invest $10.3 billion through the end of 2026 to improve reimbursement rates to healthcare providers and expand access to care.
Transit: Lawmakers also want to restore a $2-billion reduction in transportation funding that Newsom proposed in May.
Newsom’s infrastructure plan remains the biggest point of contention between the governor and lawmakers, who have questioned why the bills must be passed now instead of through the regular and more deliberative legislative process for policy issues that concludes in September, or even next year.
Newsom administration officials said the 10 bills [on infrastructure] proposed by the governor are critical to meeting California’s climate goals. The governor’s office has called the bills California’s “most ambitious permitting and project review reforms in a half-century” and said the legislation could reduce project timelines by more than three years in some cases...
Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-06-12/newsom-and-democratic-lawmakers-remain-divided-on-budget-plan.
There is a vague reference above to "education" as a point of disagreement, but we don't know whether the extra $86 million for various UC programs added by the legislature will survive the negotiations.
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