Last week California Governor Jerry Brown signed a spending plan for fiscal 2016 through 2017. It increases funding for child care and those state reserves. What does it do for San Diego? Joining me is Toni Atkins. The new state budget into effect July 1. This budget looks a lot different from your early days in the assembly. ________________________________________ It does. From a $26 billion deficit to we are putting money in the rainy day fund about 8.5 Ilya dollars. We are putting money back into critical services that we have not addressed in a long time most importantly education. Are we -- ________________________________________ I anywhere close to where we can say that the IOUs and deficits are gone? ________________________________________ California has turned a corner thanks to the voters and legislature which -- but we have to be ready which is why you see the governor wanted to be sure that we shore up the rainy day fund. When you think about it $8.5 billion is good but when you face a deficit -- we have to be prudent and think about that. We are the sixth-largest economy in the world that is good for us. We have to look at how we improve services, ergo childcare and education and in large part that is thanks to the voters which has allowed us are budget for education is the highest it has ever been in California, $72 billion and a lot of that is coming in to K-12 community college and it has allowed us to put general fund money into higher education. We do still have to pay attention to how we are spending and what the return on investment is. Are we helping struggling Californians? When we turn the corner what we see is not everybody has made the come back and we need to be mindful of that. ________________________________________ When it comes to San Diego what are some of the items that you see that will help things in San Diego. ________________________________________ When we get back to education we will support 750 more students at UCSD. Our local schools forget about $50 million more based on the control funding and all of the system's and the courts will get more money. Through the courts will be digital so upgrader services. We will get $4.5 million for the San Diego River Conservancy to protect the watershed and things like that. We will get $3.3 million for child care funding which will double next year. We would get 1.8 9,000,002 better maintain state park. Will get $1.3 million people will be excited and Hillcrest to see this and how we make it better. I am particularly pleased because we got $3 million to put into interpretation services for medical care. Parts of the communities are used to cover in city Heights, in the -- 85 languages and dialects. We have approved because of the affordable care act coverage for more than 3 million Californians. What if they cannot understand the language. We have put money into enforcement for my A.B. 96 the elephant tusks and ivory ban bill so that we can do enforcement on the ivory ban so we're working hard to bring many home as we look at the overall state. ________________________________________ As you know two big issues are affordable housing and housing for the homeless. ________________________________________ It's not completely decided. We pass the home for all which gets to how to use proposition 63 months to make sure that we are using some of those dollars that were supported years ago actually go for permanent supportive housing for homeless individuals. Those at -- and those on the edge of homeless. The legislature approved it and the governor signed it. What is still outstanding is $400 million to put towards development of passing if in fact the legislature will support the by right which basically is a streamlining issue. People are a little confused about that. We have to put on that when we go back from August. Is a city and a community has a general plan they should not be afraid if I write. This is -- we are about 1.5 million units of housing short in California and we see how that lays out here at home. We are still getting money -- a little bit of money from sustainable communities and cap and trade. Hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the state but part of it is how quickly can you build housing for people who need it. ________________________________________ What you think is missing from this budget? ________________________________________ While you cannot do everything overnight. We are still talk about ensuring that there is adequate access for healthcare and part of that is when do we increase the Medi-Cal reimbursement rates. If it costs you more to use this -- to do the service and to provide the service we are not actually giving access to people. The next that we will address his reimbursement rates. We are not there on education at. We had a decade of cuts and you think about a decade that the kids going through school. We are slowly restoring those resources that we are not there yet. We are not there on childcare the highest percentage of workers in the state are single mothers. We need more money in higher education but we need to make sure we will see the return on investment. ________________________________________ One thing that was very close to your heart is trying to get some money for the billions that we need to repair our roads in California. That is still something that is not decided. ________________________________________ It is out there. Obviously we have to look at it locally in San Diego County with the potential tax measure. We have looked at local options in the state that would take care of state roadways but also support local roads and it's an election year. If you look at new models of funding you get into a fee or tax and it takes a two thirds vote and we will not get the and the legislature we are looking at various methods of its vehicles and miles traveled and the local center on that body looking at ways that we can two different funding based on an outdated model of the gas tax. We are not done it's clearly important so we still have our work cut out for us. ________________________________________ I have been speaking with assemblywoman Toni Atkins . Thank you so much.
Without a lot of controversy or hand wringing, Gov. Jerry Brown last month signed California's $122.5 billion budget for fiscal 2017.
The new spending plan took effect July 1, and it increases funding for schools and child care. It also boosts the state's rainy-day reserve fund.
The budget also repeals the Maximum Family Grant, or family-cap rule, in the state's welfare-to-work program known as CalWORKS. This rule was designed to discourage women who are receiving welfare benefits from having more children. It tied the amount of their welfare aid to the size of their family when they began receiving benefits.
Democratic Assemblywoman Toni Atkins of San Diego discusses Tuesday on KPBS Midday Edition how the new budget will affect San Diego County.
