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Finance officials are now trying to piece together why the balance sheets for "special funds" are off by $2.3 billion -- money that appeared to be right under their noses amid California's financial meltdown. The fund that gives restitution to violent crime victims was off by $29 million. The one that provides children with low-cost health insurance was $30 million out of balance. The fund that rewards people for recycling bottles and cans was $113 million off. "Where are these dollars?" asked state Senate budget chairman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who said it was a "big problem" that the special...

Passage of the budget seemed to be almost a non-event in the Capitol compared to years past — in part because it was only a prelude to the battle at the polls in November, when Brown and his allies will try to persuade voters to approve billions in new taxes. The budget passed Friday leaves a hole of more than $8 billion, which Democrats hope will be filled by temporary increases in both the state sales tax and income tax on the wealthy. If Brown's tax proposals are rejected, California's public schools would bear the brunt of the pain,

California lawmakers have scheduled a Friday budget vote on their plan to balance a $15.7 billion deficit as they run up against a constitutional deadline or risk losing their pay. With Gov. Jerry Brown refusing to sign off on their plan, Democratic leaders said they would work to pass a budget and continue negotiations with him on several sticking points, particularly welfare cuts.

To help bridge a $15.7 billion deficit, the Democratic governor has asked his own party's lawmakers to overhaul welfare-to-work, slash in-home care and require low-income students to earn higher grades for scholarship aid. But Democrats plan to reject more than $1 billion of those cuts, saying the state has already balanced enough prior budgets on the backs of poor Californians. They lack a deal with Brown, but lawmakers face a Friday constitutional deadline to send him a budget or lose their pay.

FLASHBACK.. 2011 Democrats reject GOP plan to eliminate CA's $15.4 billion deficit without tax hike.... From 2011 ! Deficit is now $16 billion... For some in California its Déjà vu all over again. This week Governor Jerry Brown announced his ‘Honest’ budget from last year is now $16 billion in the red. Republicans did not support his plan. They offered their own plan to cut state spending and balance the budget without tax hikes. Now, one year later the Governor's new plan is convince voters to approve $63 billion in new taxes (over 7 years) According to an LA Times...

Gov. Jerry Brown announced on Saturday that the state’s deficit has ballooned to $16 billion, a huge increase over his $9.2-billion estimate in January. The bigger deficit is a significant setback for California, which has struggled to turn the page on a devastating budget crisis. Brown, who announced the deficit on YouTube, is expected to outline his full budget proposal on Monday in Sacramento. “This means we will have to go much further, and make cuts far greater, than I asked for at the beginning of the year,” Brown said in the video. Lawmakers and others were hoping that a...

Despite a huge state budget deficit, Gov. Jerry Brown said last week that he not only intends to increase spending, he also plans to move ahead with California's questionable high-speed rail project, even though multiple critiques conclude it is a waste of tax money. ... The governor's refusal to delay or kill the implausible train project should make taxpayers wary of a bill introduced last week by Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-West Hollywood, to allow "public rail transit projects" to avoid rigorous environmental review.

State Attorney General Kamala Harris has rejected a GOP request that she opine on whether the state budget signed by Gov. Jerry Brown is constitutional. Republican lawmakers asked Harris last month to examine whether the budget complies with the constitution's requirements for education funding. Supervising deputy attorney general Susan Duncan Lee wrote in response that Harris' office could not do so because it will likely have to represent the state should someone sue on those grounds. Interestingly, Lee suggested in a Tuesday letter that the budget is destined for a court battle.

When Gov. Jerry Brown and Republicans failed to reach agreement on closing the state budget deficit, they also failed to resolve several budget-related issues – most prominently what, if anything, should be done to rein in public employees' pensions. Pension costs are not yet a huge component of the state budget because the vast majority of its funds are given to others to spend. But they are huge in local governments, especially cities, which spend most of their money on personnel – especially high-wage police officers and firefighters – and face rapidly escalating pension costs. Republicans wanted to scale back...

While the Obama Administration halts deportations to work on its secret amnesty plan, hospitals across the U.S. are getting stuck with the exorbitant tab of medically treating illegal immigrants and some are finally demanding compensation from the federal government. The group that represents most of the nation’s hospitals and medical providers recently urged President Obama to work with Congress to reimburse them for the monstrous cost of treating illegal immigrants. Federal law requires facilities to “treat and stabilize individuals” regardless of their immigration status, but federal support for the services remains “virtually nonexistent,” according to a letter submitted by the...

Things just got bleaker for California's poorest residents. CalWORKs, the state's "welfare to work" program, took a major hit in the state budget deal that Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Thursday, reducing grants to their lowest levels in more than 20 years. Beginning today, monthly grants will be slashed by 8 percent, to an average of $460 for a family of three. That translates to an income that is less than 30 percent of the amount the federal government has determined is necessary to meet basic needs. In addition, the new budget reduces the lifetime limit on CalWORKs cash...

NEW: But — It’s Still a Phony Budget: The SacBee provided details of some of the changes that supposedly “balance” the budget. One is “$200 million Amazon online tax enforcement.” They actually think they can heist this money even though Amazon has promised it will fire the “affiliates” — some 20,000 small Mom and Pop outfits — that would be taxed. The tax would only affect those who use Amazon’s sales engine, not buy directly from Amazon itself (direct sales are ruled by federal law which isn’t changing). But there were no reforms in the Brown/Democrat budget — no spending...

Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders announced today that they have reached an agreement on a new majority-vote budget plan. "We've had some tough discussions, but I can tell you that the Democrats in both the Senate and the Assembly have now joined with the administration and myself and we have a very good plan going forward with the budget," Brown said at a press conference in his office this afternoon. The proposal, outlined in this post, assumes that the state will bring in an additional $4 billion in revenues in the upcoming fiscal year, based in part on...

Hours after vetoing the state budget, Gov. Jerry Brown said this afternoon that he will continue negotiating with Republican lawmakers at least until month's end. "We need four Republican votes, and in the next several days I'm going to do everything I can," Brown said at a press conference at his office in Los Angeles. "I'll move heaven and earth to get those votes." The veto was widely viewed as crucial politically to Brown, who staked his campaign and first six months in office on his promise to adopt a spending plan balanced without accounting maneuvers. To abandon that effort...

Los Angeles -- Gov. Jerry Brown's veto today of the state budget adopted by Democratic legislators on Wednesday marks the first time in state history a governor has rejected a spending plan. The governor made his announcement this morning in an online video, then spoke to reporters at a news conference in Los Angeles this afternoon, where he said he vetoed the budget "because it doesn't meet the needs of the state." "Whatever happens, we will get a better budget than we have today," he added. Democratic leaders of the Senate and Assembly held a news conference at the Capitol...

Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed the budget package passed Wednesday by Democratic legislators, sources say, which creates a potential rift within his own party. The sources said an announcement was expected soon. [Updated at 10:42 a.m., June 16: Brown announced the veto in a press release Thursday. "Unfortunately, the budget I have received is not a balanced solution," his statement said. "It continues big deficits for years to come and adds billions of dollars of new debt. It also contains legally questionable maneuvers, costly borrowing and unrealistic savings. Finally, it is not financeable and therefore will not allow us to...

Today, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association blasted the phony budget proposed by the Democrat majority in the legislature. ... (They use)illegal maneuvers and gimmicks: a CALFire surcharge on home insurance policies is illegal; stealing of $1 billion from California’s First Five funds is illegal; the $1.2 billion .. from the sale of State office buildings has already been determined to be illegal. “If self-serving lawmakers attempt to circumvent Prop. 13 and the will of the people,” said Coupal, “We will see them in court.”

Gov. Jerry Brown says California has a "wall of debt" that must be reduced – and is now using it as his chief rationale for a temporary boost in taxes. At the same time, however, he is proposing to borrow billions more by issuing some of the bonds that voters have authorized for public works projects. And therein lies a rub. Brown's "wall of debt" refers mostly to an estimated $35 billion in loans and deferred payments that former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature adopted to paper over the state budget's chronic deficits. However, Brown's revised budget also notes...

In his revised budget issued Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown resisted the temptation to overspend and instead called upon legislators to pay down California's daunting debt. That's quite a concept, one worthy of support. With the economy beginning to rebound, the state is expected to collect $6.6 billion more in taxes this year and next fiscal year. Rather than spend it all, Brown wants to use much of it to pay off what he calls a "wall of debt." By his estimate, his budget would shave $29 billion from the state's debt of $35 billion by 2014. But there is a...

A large majority of Californians favor the outline of Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to eliminate the state budget deficit, but they strongly oppose key elements of the proposal that would increase the personal income tax and the state sales tax, according to a new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California.