Thread by @johnmyers

A brief #cabudget thread on a notable non-event... not enough for a story but, hey, enough, for Twitter.

In short: today's the day by which the June budget deal hoped additional federal coronavirus relief funds would come in.

And as everyone knows, that didn't happen.

There were 2 viewpoints about how to deal with the need for more federal help when @GavinNewsom projected a $54B deficit in the springtime, a shortfall spanning two fiscal years: write a budget assuming the feds would come to the rescue... or... write one assuming they wouldn't.

CA Senate Dems preferred to assume the money would come, but to insert automatic cuts to schools and more to be triggered ON if the feds failed.

Newsom balked at that, insisting the cuts take effect immediately and could be triggered OFF if fed money arrived by 10/15 -- today.

As I wrote in June, the final #cabudget agreement identified $11 billion in spending cuts that would be reversed if $14B+ came from DC in a CARES 2.0 package. 👇

latimes.com/california/sto…

The budget required Newsom's finance director to report back to legislators on 10/15 with information on what happened.

The letter submitted this morning could have said, "You would have to have been living under a ROCK to not know this, but..."

(Alas, it was polite.)

And so, status quo. The lion's share of the $11 billion in #cabudget spending reductions were made on the backs of public schools, telling educators to go find the money in their cash reserves or through borrowing and the state will pay it back when there's enough tax revenue.

Here's a look at the full $11B in cuts that could have been restored had DC taken action...

One final note: my reporting from the spring suggested #cabudget augmentations might be made once final tax receipts were in. That really didn't happen & collections have bested projections several times. Regardless, we won't see what can be done with that until Dec or Jan.
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