California legislators failed to pass a state budget before Tuesday, but Assemblymember David Chiu (D-San Francisco) is far more optimistic about the state’s 2021-22 budget process than he was entering the year.
"We are in a much different time period at this moment than we were even just a few months ago," Chiu said Tuesday in an interview with KCBS Radio’s “The State Of California.”
Lawmakers passed a temporary budget on Monday that will allow them to continue to negotiate a proposed spending plan worth nearly $268 billion. The bill currently being discussed includes almost $12 billion over the next two years to address homelessness, and one-time stimulus checks to Californians earning fewer than $75,000 per year who didn’t receive a check in the state’s first round of relief funds.
Gov. Gavin Newsom revised the state’s budget last month, including $75.7 billion in funds from the state’s surplus and federal money from the American Rescue Plan Act.
The Legislature wants the 2021-22 budget to include more commitments to future spending, citing a future revenue “windfall” between $12 billion and $40 billion from the Legislative Analyst Office’s projections.
Although there are differences in both plans, Chiu said he couldn’t have expected either to propose as much spending at the beginning of the year. Fewer than six months ago, much of the state was in the midst of another regional stay-at-home order as officials tried to combat the spread of COVID-19.
On Tuesday, the state lifted almost all of its coronavirus-related restrictions.
"I think when we began this year, we were all expecting the worst, just given how hard the pandemic has hit our economy and how we had not received much of (any) help from the federal government,” Chiu said.
“But fortunately, the Biden-Harris administration has been able to provide an enormous amount of federal stimulus help and, as a result, we've been able to craft, really, a historic and transformational budget that will help us meet the challenges of today in assisting families and businesses that are struggling from the pandemic, while also investing in tomorrow with new (priorities)."
