Family focus in budget plans
Newsom is set to propose new spending on early education and an expansion of paid parental leave.
SACRAMENTO — California’s new governor, who must send his first state budget plan to the Legislature this week, has already signaled a significant new focus on programs to help families and children from infancy to college.
Gov. Gavin Newsom campaigned on a platform that included a number of child-focused efforts aimed at helping lower-income families. The price tag for the initial efforts is expected to approach $2 billion — a cost paid out of an unrestricted tax revenue windfall that could be one of the largest in state history.
Newsom might also seek help for families through new subsidies paid by California employers. He is expected to propose a dramatic expansion of paid parental leave — from six weeks to six months — according to an internal document provided by a source close to the Newsom transition team, first reported on Sunday by the New York Times.
The document doesn’t offer a full explanation for how the program will be funded, saying instead that the budget will set “a goal of ensuring that all newborns and newly adopted babies can be cared for by a parent or a close family member for the first six months.” Employers across the state are currently assessed a payroll tax that helps offer a subsidy to parents who temporarily leave their job to care for a newborn.
Newsom’s plan, according to the document, would pay for some of the new costs by shrinking the mandated cash reserve of the state fund that administers the program, allowing more of the money to be paid in benefits. The increase in paid
leave would not all happen at once but instead be phased in over several years.
A task force to help implement the expanded care plan is also envisioned, according to the document. It would determine whether two parents could split the six months of paid leave and whether an extended family member could be enlisted to help care for the child of a single parent over the sixmonth period.
The incoming administration’s focus on young children will also include $1.8 billion in new spending on early childhood education programs, with a focus on training childcare workers and pushing for more California schools to offer full-day kindergarten. Those costs, according to an overview memo obtained by the Los Angeles Times, are considered a one-time expense while leaving the long-term costs of the effort to be determined later.
More community college students would get free tuition under a third initiative expected in the new governor’s budget plan. Newsom will propose spending $40 million to offer a second year of tuition-free college to California students, according to an outline provided by a transition official, first reported by Politico. Students are already eligible for a single year of paid tuition under a plan agreed to by Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers in 2017.
Newsom, who was to be sworn in Monday, embraced the idea of free community college during the 2018 campaign as part of a broader focus on additional investments in higher education.
“Education is an economic development strategy,” Newsom said at a higher education forum last spring. “We need to significantly increase the investment from the general fund of this state on higher education. There’s no greater higher return on investment.”
Whether the proposal would be targeted to students based on a family’s financial need is unclear. Many low-income students are already eligible for fee waivers at community colleges. The governor must submit his full state budget plan to lawmakers no later than Thursday.