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Budget and Policy Post

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The 2022-23 California Spending Plan: Human Services

October 21, 2022 - The 2022-23 spending plan provides over $25 billion from the General Fund for human services programs. This is an increase of over $4 billion, or 19 percent, compared to the revised, prior-year spending level.


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The 2022-23 California Spending Plan: Resources and Environmental Protection

October 10, 2022 - The 2022-23 budget package provides a total of $23.7 billion from various fund sources—the General Fund, bond funds, and a number of special funds—for programs administered by the California Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Agencies.

Update (11/17/22): Estimated federal allotments to SWRCB have been updated to $760 million.


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The 2022-23 California Spending Plan: Higher Education

October 4, 2022 - This post summarizes the state’s 2022-23 spending package for higher education. It is part of our Spending Plan series. In this post, we provide a short overview of the state’s higher education spending package, then cover spending for the California Community Colleges (CCC), California State University (CSU), University of California (UC), student financial aid, student housing, and California State Library.


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The 2022-23 California Spending Plan: The State Appropriations Limit

September 30, 2022 - This post describes the legislative and administrative decisions regarding the State Appropriations Limit (SAL) in the 2022‑23 budget process.


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The 2022-23 California Spending Plan: Transportation

September 29, 2022 - The budget package provides a total of $33 billion for transportation-related programs in 2022-23, including for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA), local streets and roads (shared revenues), California Highway Patrol (CHP), Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), and High-Speed Rail Authority (HSRA).


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The 2022-23 California Spending Plan: Other Provisions

September 27, 2022 - This post discusses features of the state's spending plan that were not covered elsewhere in the 2022-23 Spending Plan series.


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The 2022-23 California Spending Plan: Judiciary and Criminal Justice

September 26, 2022 - The 2022-23 budget provides $18.7 billion from the General Fund for judicial and criminal justice programs, including support for program operations and capital outlay projects. This is an increase of $852 million, or 5 percent, above the revised 2021-22 spending level.


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The 2022-23 California Spending Plan: Housing and Homelessness

September 16, 2022 - The 2022-23 budget authorizes an additional $7.2 billion over three years to 20 major housing and homelessness programs within the Housing and Community Development Department (HCD), the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA), the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, and the California Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal ICH).


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Overview of California's Ports

August 23, 2022 - This post describes how ports across the state operate and are funded, discusses related air quality and port congestion issues, and reviews recent state and federal actions regarding ports.


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Annual Report on Tax Exemptions for Medicinal Cannabis

June 24, 2022 - Chapter 837 of 2019 (SB 34, Wiener) established new tax exemptions for donations of medicinal cannabis. The law directs our office to submit an annual report containing data on three outcomes related to the exemptions: the number of medicinal cannabis patients served, the amount of medicinal cannabis products donated, and the amount of tax revenue lost. This report fulfills that statutory requirement for 2021.


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The 2022-23 Budget: Vote by Mail Ballots: Prepaid Postage

May 13, 2022 - This post provides our comments and recommendation to approve the Governor's proposal to fund the prepaid postage mandate for vote by mail ballots.


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The 2022-23 Budget: Fuel Price and Other Fiscal Relief Options

May 12, 2022 - In response to increasing prices across the economy—particularly fuel prices—the Legislature is contemplating a number of policies for providing fiscal relief to Californians. In this post, we identify key questions for the Legislature to consider when analyzing the merits of the options proposed by the Governor and in designing its own relief package.


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The 2022-23 Budget: Update on K-12 Student Attendance

May 11, 2022 - In early March, the California Department of Education published the first report of 2021-22 attendance data. In this post, we provide background on the calculation of school attendance, describe findings from the updated data, and discuss a few key issues to provide greater context for the findings.


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The 2022-23 Budget: Office of Planning and Research Higher Education Proposals

May 10, 2022 - The Office of Planning and Research (OPR) is tasked by state law to support statewide planning and research activities. Among its many activities, the office has overseen certain higher education initiatives. This post analyzes three higher education OPR proposals in the Governor’s January budget for 2022‑23 related to the California Education Learning Laboratory, the Golden State Awards, and Carnegie Science.


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The 2022-23 Budget: Hastings College of the Law

May 10, 2022 - The Governor’s January budget proposes a $2 million (12 percent) General Fund base increase for the Hastings College of the Law (Hastings) in 2022‑23. After accounting for other revenue increases (primarily from student tuition revenue), Hastings’ total ongoing core budget would increase by $5 million (6.7 percent). Generally, we think the Governor’s proposal is a good starting point for budget deliberations. This is because Hastings’ corresponding expenditure plan primarily focuses on basic workload adjustments. That said, we emphasize that this proposal is a starting point. The Legislature likely will want to weigh this proposal against its other 2022‑23 budget priorities. Moreover, we note that Hastings could face higher‑than‑expected costs in 2022‑23 as part of its recent initiative to change its name.