Governor’s budget continues past priorities
Newsom also proposes “gas tax holiday”
Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled his proposed $286 billion budget for the 20222023 fiscal year which continued to stress the same priorities his budgets have stressed in recent years:
Continuing to deal with the state’s issues when it comes to COVID-19, homelessness, climate change, wildfires and water. The Governor also projects the budget to have a $45.7 billion surplus that will have to be approved by the State Legislature this summer.
One of the major proposals by Newsom is a “gas tax holiday” as he’s proposing no increase in the gas tax this summer. The scheduled increase in the gas tax has been implemented every year, but Newsom has proposed not to implement that increase this year.
That should be somewhat popular with conservative lawmakers in the state — who have proposed at least temporarily getting rid of the gas tax all together. But even not increasing the gas tax could be tricky as cities and counties have depended heavily on the gas tax and its increases over the years to fund much needed road repairs.
Newsom, in referring to his budget as the California Blueprint, has proposed major investments in five priority areas he has identified.
One is COVID in which the Governor as was reported included $2.7 billion for vaccines, boosters, testing and to increase the number of health care workers to address. the shortage of health care workers when it comes to dealing with the COVID virus.
Climate change is another priority which includes the issues of dealing with wildfires and the drought as far as providing for the state’s water needs. Newsom’s budget includes $648 million to increase the number of firefighters and provide for more helicopters and bulldozers.
Another $1.2 billion is included to provide for more active forest management such as prescribed burning on top of the $1.5 billion that Newsom included in his budget last year.
And on top of Newsom’s already proposed $5.2 billion water package for the coming years, Newsom has proposed an additional $750 million in this budget to help the state’s residents and farmers deal with the drought.
Newsom’s California Blueprint also includes an ambitious goal for an oil-free future for the state.
When it comes to homelessness Newsom's budget includes $2 billion for mental health housing and services and clearing encampments as he continues to build on his investment in providing cities and counties funding to deal with homelessness.
His proposal calls for 55,000 new housing units for the homeless and expands on last year's $12 billion investment Newsom made in his budget to deal with homelessness. There would be $500 million in Newsom's budget this year that would go to cleaning up homeless encampments.
Another of Newsom's priorities in his California Blueprint is dealing with the cost of living. He has set a goal to create a complete universal health care system in the state, which would include covering illegal immigrants. He's also calling for the state to deal with the cost of child care and education, continuing on his goal to provide free universal pre-k education for the state's children.
Newsom's blueprint also provides a huge investment to deal with the state's affordable housing issue as it proposes $2 billion in new grants and tax incentives.
And as far as COVID relief when it comes to small businesses, Newsom has also proposed hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and tax breaks for small businesses impacted by the pandemic.
Another priority Newsom has set is what he refers to as “keeping our streets safe,” which the governor's office states provides a “Real Public Safety Plan,” which focuses on three key areas:
$255 million in grants to local law enforcement to bolster their forces and response. This also includes a new Smash and Grab Enforcement Unit to combat the rash of organized retail crime incidents. Also included are grants for small businesses that have been victims of smash and grab incidents.
The other two key areas in the proposal are providing for more prosecutors and to remove guns and drugs from the streets.
Included in the $750 million in drought relief is to replenish groundwater supplies for small farmers. The $1.2 billion in the budget to fight wildfires would include funding for 20 new state firefighting crews. There's also $100 million for reforestation projects.
Newsom's budget also includes training for workers in new industries in rural areas of the state.
One unique program proposed in Newsom's budget would be to provide $44 million to develop a logging program designed to clear smaller trees and shrubs that fuel wildfires. There isn't a lot of value in that type of value, but the smaller trees and shrubs are the kind used in IKEA furniture and Newsom's proposal would provide private industry with financial incentives to do such logging.
Largely because of environmental restrictions, the state doesn't haven nearly enough lumber mills to remove millions of trees that fuel megafires, those in the forestry industry state.
As far as the homeless, Newsom also has a $100 million proposal to develop affordable mobile home parks, mostly to be used in rural areas of the state.
When it comes to the health care worker shortage, Newsom proposes spending on recruiting, training and hiring more health care workers, including doctors, nurses, social workers and community health workers. Again rural areas would be stressed when it comes to providing more health care workers
Also included in Newsom's proposed budget is funding for infrastructure and $34.6 billion to keep in reserve and to pay down billions in pension debts. The budget also includes $119 billion for K-12 schools.
Major investments in transportation are included in Newsom's budget when it comes to infrastructure and high speed rail isn't dead yet in Newsom's budget. His budget would send billions to high speed rail. A total of $9.1 billion is included in Newsom's budget for transportation, including high speed rail. Lawmakers have already “railed” against Newsom's proposal to continue to fund the high speed rail project substantially.
In all Newsom said he's proposing a total of $22 billion in coming years to deal with climate change.
The budget surplus is due to higher taxes on the state's higher earners, which is providing more revenue for the state as its higher earners are earning more in a strong overall economy, but with still many who continue to struggle do to the pandemic.