California’s flush budget a ‘huge advantage’ for Newsom + Dave Jones is back + Drought worsens
Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!
REST IN PEACE: Cruz Reynoso, the trailblazing attorney who became the first Latino justice to serve on the California Supreme Court, died Friday. Read Sacramento Bee columnist Marcos Bretón’s tribute to him here.
A ROSY MAY REVISE
Drought and dry wildfire conditions. A pandemic. A recall election with a panoply of ambitious would-be adversaries.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has a lot of problems.
Money isn’t one of them.
This week he’s expected to release a revised state budget proposal that’s so flush with revenue he’ll be obliged by law to send some of it back to taxpayers in the form of refunds.
It’s a far cry from the budget he presented a year ago that slashed public employee salaries, cut spending on universities and delayed billions of dollars worth of projects to shore up what was expected to be a severe recession.
The economic pain from the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t as bad as Newsom thought, at least not for the well-off Californians whose income tax fuels the state general fund. He conceded as much in January with a $227 budget outline for the upcoming fiscal year that anticipated a $15 billion surplus and called for billions of dollars more for emergency spending related to COVID-19.
Now tax revenue is rolling in $16.7 billion above Newsom’s rosy January projections, presenting opportunities for him to score big wins with important allies and secure political capital for himself as he prepares to face a recall.
Democratic consultant Garry South, who managed former Gov. Gray Davis’ gubernatorial campaigns, said the surplus is a “huge advantage” to Newsom ahead of a recall. Davis, by contrast, came into office with a budget shortfall, and spent the months before his recall election grappling with Republican legislators over a budget deal.
Newsom won’t have the same problem, South said. Not only do Republicans hold fewer seats in the Legislature, lawmakers no longer need a two-thirds majority to pass a budget by the state’s June 15 deadline like they did during Davis’ tenure.
“This thing will be passed and signed by the governor long before the recall ever comes along, because the Republicans don’t have the power in the Legislature, like they did in 2002 and 2003 to drag this process out,” he said.
Newsom’s office late Sunday said the governor plans to release some details today at an event in Alameda County.
You can read more on who Newsom might want to help in our story today.
MEET DAVE JONES, SENATE CANDIDATE
Via Hannah Wiley...
Former California Insurance Commissioner and Assemblyman Dave Jones announced is running to fill the Senate District 6 seat representing the Sacramento region when it opens in 2022.
The veteran California politician is the latest to join a crowded field of candidates vying for the seat that Democratic Sen. Richard Pan will vacate when he’s termed out next year. So far, seven candidates have filed statements of intention to run, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office.
Candidates include several prominent Democrats, like Sacramento City Council members Eric Guerra and Angelique Ashby and South Sacramento Pastor Tecoy Porter.
Jones, a Democrat, said he’ll stand out in the competitive field for his tenure running the state’s consumer protection agency and for his years of legislative experience while serving in the Assembly and Sacramento city council.
“I’ve had the privilege of serving in the state Legislature before and was successful in enacting legislation to address issues in the Sacramento area,” Jones said in a phone interview with The Sacramento Bee. “I believe I have the qualifications and experience necessary to use this office to effectively and successfully address the challenges Sacramento faces.”
Since leaving statewide office in 2019, Jones has focused on climate change solutions as the senior director of the Nature Conservancy and director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at UC Berkeley.
If elected to be Sacramento’s next state senator, Jones pledged to continue the work battling environmental degradation in a state plagued by climate change.
DROUGHT CONDITIONS WORSEN
Via Dale Kasler...
California’s drought conditions have gone from bad to worse in scarcely a month.
In the weeks following April 1, the traditional end of the rainy season, warm temperatures have burned off most of the Sierra Nevada snowpack and left the state’s water network gasping. Instead of delivering a generous volume of melted snow into California’s rivers and reservoirs, the snowpack has largely evaporated into the air or trickled into the ground.
“We got unlucky. A lot of it didn’t make it into the reservoirs,” said Jeffrey Mount, a geologist and water expert at the Public Policy Institute of California.
The miserly output from the Sierra Nevada helps explain why the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly hydrological analysis by the federal government, shows 93% of California in either “severe,” “extreme” or “exceptional” drought. A month ago, only about two-thirds of the state was facing those conditions.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“He never asked for the limelight, or awards or anything. He just always felt his work was unfinished.”
- Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo in the Los Angeles Times on California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso’s passing.
Best of the Bee:
The California DMV will continue to offer written drivers license tests in 32 languages, reversing a decision from last week to drop 25 of the languages, according to its public affairs office, via Wes Venteicher
Mike Madrid, the veteran Latino voting trends expert, is now in the political wilderness, cast out by Trump-supporting California Republicans and shunned by the state party for his public castigation of the former president, via Hannah Wiley.