California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) claimed the state will have a budget surplus next year.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the “budget outlook Newsom describes is a major turnaround from the $47 billion deficit last year and the $32 billion shortfall the year before.” The governor believes the state’s financial situation can be attributed to stock market gains from wealthy taxpayers.
The outlet further reported that Newsom suggested the surplus would be “small.”
Newsom’s $322 billion budget proposal includes $228.9 billion for general spending and about $17 billion in total budget reserves.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Newsom’s office said he intends to withdraw $7.1 billion from the state’s rainy day reserves. The move comes after he declared a fiscal emergency last year and removed $5.1 billion to balance the current budget. He also took out $900 million from a safety net reserve.
Newsom has asserted that President-elect Donald Trump’s vows to cut federal spending could affect the state.
“Even as we were working with the Trump administration, they were still assaulting our values and programs and hard-earned rights under the law,” Newsom said during an event Monday. “We should anticipate nothing less than that.” He previously proposed a “Trump-proof” legal fund of $25 million to fight against the incoming presidential administration.
According to a document from the governor’s office, Newsom is “seeking up to $25 million for the California Department of Justice (DOJ) and state agencies to defend against unconstitutional or unlawful federal government actions, challenge federal overreach in court, and take administrative actions to reduce potential harm.”
American Faith reported that despite Newsom’s prior claims about job growth in the state, California lost 156,300 jobs in the first half of 2024. In January, California’s payroll data counted 18,037,900 jobs, but by June, that number had dropped to 17,881,600. The governor used preliminary data to declare that California created over 672,000 jobs between January 2022 and June 2024. When looking at the final adjusted data, job growth during this period was 499,600.
