The 2026-27 Budget: California's Fiscal Outlook

Nov 19, 2025 - This  is not a prediction of what will happen —state and federal laws and policies will change in the coming years —but rather serves as a baseline to help the Legislature understand its starting place.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5091

The 2026-27 Budget: Overview of the Governor's Budget

Jan 12, 2026 - That said, recent budgets have set the SFEU bet ween $3.5  billion and $4.5  billion, so the Governor ’s budget proposal to set the balance to $4.5  billion is generally in line with recent policy.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5101

The 2025-26 Budget: California's Fiscal Outlook

Nov 20, 2024 - This is not a prediction of what will happen —state and federal laws and policies will change in the coming years —but rather serves as a baseline to help the Legislature understand its starting place.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4939

The 2019-20 Budget: Undoing California’s Outstanding Budgetary Deferrals

Mar 26, 2019 - The Legislature could consider transitioning Medi-Cal back to an accrual budget as a way to increase legislative oversight and improve the predictability of the Medi-Cal budget. Doing so would match budgeted costs to when services are delivered, more closely align Medi-Cal ’s budget with the trends in underlying program dynamics, smooth year-to-year changes in the Medi-Cal budget, and could make the budget more predictable.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3988

Fiscal Outlook Addendum: CalPERS

Nov 18, 2015 - By rejecting the faster shift to a 6.5 percent discount rate, the CalPERS action mitigates some of the near-term budget risk for retirement funding we discuss in today 's Fiscal Outlook . As we state in the Fiscal Outlook (p. 44 of the pdf version), the plan adopted today by the CalPERS board "would not necessarily increase costs above our assumptions between now and 2019-20 " because it changes the system 's discount rates so gradually.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3308

The 2019-20 Budget: Proposition 98 Outlook

Nov 14, 2018 - Inflation ‑adjusted teacher/faculty compensation for both school districts and colleges also is higher today compared to 2007 ‑08 (the pre ‑recession level). Pension Rates and Costs Have Been Growing.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3897

The 2024-25 Budget: Overview of the Governor's Budget

Jan 13, 2024 - While not all of these amounts represent lower state spending over the long term, they do result in savings today at a cost in the future. As a result, we count them as spending‑related solutions. We estimate the proposed budget includes about $3 billion in reversions.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4825

Building Reserves to Prepare for a Recession

Mar 7, 2018 - Size of the Recession Does Not Perfectly Predict Revenue Losses. In general, larger recessions result in more revenue losses, but the relationship is not perfect. By most measures, the recession of the early 1990s was more severe than the dot ‑com bust in the early 2000s.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3769

An Extraordinary Moment in California's Fiscal History

Apr 11, 2019 - Because the MCO tax package leverages federal Medicaid matching funds, the Governor ’s nonproposal in this area has the effect of leaving money on the table. Therefore, we think the Legislature should strongly consider extending the MCO tax package even in the absence of a proposal to do so from the Governor.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4003

Despite Fiscal Forecasting Uncertainties, Multiyear Budget Planning Essential

May 27, 2021 - While events of the past year show that attempting to predict the future is a fool ’s errand, the value of multiyear fiscal estimates is not in their predictive precision. Rather, policymakers need insight on the condition of the state ’s underlying fiscal operations —annual revenues relative to expenditures —outside of any near-term surplus or deficit.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4443