Data Summaries, Table 3 California State Government Table Recent
Table 3 contains information for California’s fiscal years 2023, 2024, and 2025 (starting on July 1 and ending on June 30 of the next year). After searching through numerous reports, mostly produced by different state organizations, Table 3 summarizes how California has provided “solutions” to overcome its budget “problems” with meeting the State Constitution’s balanced budget requirements. This approach to showing California’s budget process was used partly because the state’s revenue sources and spending totals do not seem to be complete (as seen in Table 4).
Table 3: Recent State of California Budget Data 1
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Fiscal Year | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26
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Governor | Newsom | Newsom | Newsom
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General Funds (B$) | 223.1 | 233.6 | 228.4
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Special Funds (B$) | 103.6 | 98.6 | 88.8 |
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Bond Funds (B$) | 5,3 | 5.7 | 3.9 |
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Budget Total (B$) | 332.0 | 337.9 | 321.1 |
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Budget Problem for Solution (B$)* | 26.5 | 55 | 15 |
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• Spending Reduction 2 (B$) | 2.9 | 14.1 | 5.3 |
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• Trigger Reduction 3 (B$) | 3.4 | N | N |
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• Spending Delay 4 (B$) | 7.9 | 1.6 | N |
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• Cost-Shift/Borrowing 5 (B$) | 10.3 | 3.6 | 4.1 |
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• Added Revenue 6 (B$) | 3.6 | 8 | 0.3 |
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• Reversions 7 (B$) | N | 0.9 | 1 |
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• Future Budgets 8 (B$) | N | N | 5.9 |
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• Reserve Funds 9 (B$) | N | 5.9 | N |
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• Solutions Total (B$)* | 28.1 | 34.1 | 16.6 |
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- Data from: California Legislative Analyst Office – Overview of the Enacted Spending Plan report for the listed State Fiscal Year ($’s in billions, N = less than $50 million).
- A spending reduction is a cut from an appropriation previously approved under current law or policy that would otherwise be included in the current budge.
- A trigger reduction is a spending reduction that can be restored to the current budget based on trigger restoration criteria.
- A spending delay is a reduction in the current 3-year budget period (such as 2021-22 through 2023-24) that is to be restored in the following 3-year budget period.
- A cost-shift (used in the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 budgets) or borrowing (used in the 2025-2026 budget) is shifting costs to special funds or cash from bonds.
- Added revenue is from extending or increasing current taxes or creating new taxes.
- Reversions are revenues not expended under the conditions of past budgets. This is somehow different than “augmentations” from past budgets?
- Future budget funds are “solutions” to balance the 2025-26 budget using borrowing for which the period of repayment is either not specified or is specified under conditions different than for “cost-shift/borrowing” (footnote 5 above) or “spending delay” (footnote 4 above). Please see the LAO’s FY 2025-26 Overview for details.
- Reserve funds are special funds held in reserve for a “rainy day”.
* The identified budget “problems” do not balance with listed “solutions”. Most of this might be from education funding that is difficult to follow or from differences between the LAO’s determination of problems and the Legislature’s application of solutions.
Note: Not included in the current state budget is more than $20 billion that California borrowed from the federal government for unemployment payments during the Covid shutdown. Nonpayment has increased this state debt to more than $23 billion, and repayment is now falling on small business owners through reduced unemployment insurance tax deductions. This is, in effect, a per-employee tax increase on businesses in California. So, at this time, the state has an Unemployment Insurance Fund debt of over $23 billion that Is owed to the federal government, is not included in the state budget, and has grown larger each year.
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