California Gov. Jerry Brown released his last state budget proposal Friday, kicking off a month of negotiations with the Legislature about how to spend a growing budget surplus.The Democratic governor last pegged the surplus at $6.1 billion in January and proposed spending almost none of it, preferring to direct all but $300 million to reserves. Since then revenue during the busy April tax-filing season came in even higher than expected. Brown has consistently warned that California is riding a wave of economic growth and the budgetary good times will eventually end. Hea s generally resisted new ongoing spending on social services that he says cana t be sustained.
But hea s facing pressure to boost funding on a wide variety of legislative priorities including higher education, child care and firefighting.Assembly Democrats said Monday theya ll push for a $1 billion boost in spending on health care, including $250 million to provide state-funded health coverage to low-income California residents living in the country illegally through the Medi-Cal program. Their proposal would also provide money to offset monthly premium costs for people who buy their own insurance coverage.
Assembly Democrats have also proposed expanding the earned-income tax credit to help the working poor.