"The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office reminded us of this in a recent report. It warned of a growing state budget deficit for the next fiscal year beginning July 1. In polite language, the analyst basically said that the current balanced budget as Villaraigosa might put it isn't real. The budget problem is now larger than anticipated, despite improvements in revenue, and the structural deficits are significant and growing, Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek wrote."
"They always cook the numbers, gubernatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigosa told me last spring. Villaraigosa, former Los Angeles mayor, knows firsthand about cooking. He once was in the kitchen as a powerful state Assembly speaker. Every finance person does it, he said. But there's got to be a limit. At the end of the day, you can cook [numbers] so much they're not real."
California's annual budget process often uses optimistic estimates and accounting adjustments that produce budgets balanced only on paper. Lawmakers and officials pencil in numbers and use other maneuvers to hide red-ink spending and meet legal balanced-budget requirements. Former Assembly speaker and mayor Antonio Villaraigosa described routine "cooking" of numbers and warned that such practices can make figures unreal. The Legislative Analyst's Office projects an almost $18 billion budget problem for 2026-27 and anticipates structural deficits growing to about $35 billion annually starting in 2027-28 as spending growth continues to outstrip revenue growth.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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