California's non-partisan legislative analyst said the state faces a thirteen billion dollar deficit for the fiscal year that starts in July – and will likely have to make mid-year "trigger" cuts to the current year's budget.
Mac Taylor said his office estimates the state will fail to bring in 3.7 of the four billion dollars of extra revenue projections relied on to balance the budget.
“Certainly, the four billion dollars was something that even the legislature and the governor knew was risky,” said Taylor. “That’s why they put the trigger reductions in. And while the trigger reductions don’t mitigate the entire loss of the revenue, they do mitigate a large chunk of it.”
The mid-year cuts could include the elimination of several school days for K-through-12 students and extra reductions to California’s higher education system.
But those triggers aren’t set in stone just yet. A similar projection from the governor’s Department of Finance is due out next month. The state will use the rosier of the two projections to decide whether any trigger cuts will be made.
