Gov. Brown proposes $190.3B budget

In his final year as governor, Jerry Brown is using his last budget proposal to boost some of the programs he’s championed while stashing away billions of dollars in reserves that would help his successor weather a recession.

He’s proposing a $190.3 billion spending plan that accelerates funding for his signature education law and uses new gas tax revenue to fund $4.6 billion in new transportation projects.

His proposal would set aside $3.5 billion for the state’s rainy day fund, the reserve he championed in 2010 as a means for California to soften the blow of future recessions.

That would leave the state with $13.5 billion in reserves that it could use if the economy sours.

“The key to this budget is to fill up the rainy day fund,” he said.

Brown is using some of a projected surplus to speed up the full funding of his 2013 education reform, the Local Control Funding Formula. His budget would hand schools a $3 billion for the program, which they can use to augment resources for needy students.

The biggest question Brown faced

heading into the release of his budget was how much he would save and how much he would spend from a surplus that the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office projected would give lawmakers an extra

$7 billion to spend for the general fund and an additional $5 billion in uncommitted education funding.

It’s a far cry from the dire budget he faced when he took office eight years ago, when the Great Recession had hobbled general fund revenue by $15 billion, compelling budget cuts and furloughs for state workers.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office projects general fund revenue of $135 billion for the upcoming budget year, almost $40 billion more than the state collected eight years ago.

The good times have lawmakers airing plans to spend some of the surplus. Assembly Democrats want to bolster tax credits for low-income residents and expand health care for undocumented Californians, for instance, while Republicans have called for Brown to put more into paying down debt.

Brown’s presentation warned that leaner times are near. He was flanked by two charts, one showing that his budget assumed that the current economic expansion would match the longest period of growth in the state’s history, a 120-month run that began in April 1991.

The other described California government’s recent history of over-extending itself. The state recorded deficits throughout Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s tenure and in the first years of Brown’s terms.