I’ll tell you how it’s possible. The state coffers were filled the past few years due to massive capital gains resulting from the sale of stock of employees of tech companies like Apple, Facebook (Meta), Google (Alphabet), etc. That ain’t happening this year, as most of those stocks are down and many of the gazillionaires at the top have already cashed out.
The question is, did they budget the surplus money or bank it for a rainy day? My bet is they budgeted or otherwise spent most of the surplus.
Bingo, you nailed it, it’s most likely due to non
existent realized capital gains that Ca will be
seeing a deficit. Tech stocks had a great run in
2020, but a horrible 2022...Some tech stocks down
as much as 60 percent or more.
Looks like California lost 400,000 people the past two years. It was at 39.5 million in 2020. Now it’s at 39.1 million. Texas might beat California to 40 million.