Faced with a $44.9-billion budget deficit, Gov. Gavin Newsom described a plan to shrink the size of state government and slow his progressive policy agenda by eliminating 10,000 vacant state jobs, pausing an expansion of subsidized childcare and cutting billions in funding for climate change programs.
Newsom’s revised $288-billion budget proposal, announced Friday, projected California’s deficit to be $7 billion more than the shortfall his administration expected in January. The grim forecast was driven by lower than projected state revenues, continuing a pendulum swing from the fiscal boom of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.