Following a week of policy rollouts at events around the state, Gov. Gavin Newsom rolled out his complete May Revise budget proposal Friday that includes a $100 billion economic recovery package.
It’s called the “California Comeback Plan” and makes up a large portion of the state’s $267 billion budget.
“The state, appropriately stated, is not only coming back, but comes roaring back,” said Newsom. “That $100+ billion comeback plan is the biggest economic recovery package, period, full stop, in California history.”
The budget is one-third larger than the current spending plan.
The governor is cashing in on a massive budget surplus from tax revenue and federal stimulus dollars and a healthy budget reserve.
He credits sacrifices the state and residents have made over the past 14 months.
“This historic, unprecedented, generational and transformational budget is 100% direct responsibility of 40 million people strong that not only the met the moment over the course of the last year, but met many different moments and challenges, their remarkable resiliency, their capacity for renewal.”
The recovery plan includes nearly $12 billion in stimulus checks, $5.2 billion in renters’ assistance, $5 billion to create after-school and summer programs for public school students and $12 billion to fight homelessness all the way to $300 million in forgiveness of traffic fines for low-income Californians.
The budget also includes $6 billion for water and drought issues, $7 billion to expand broadband access across the state and $2 billion in additional funding for wildfire response.
It even sets aside $35 million for a universal basic income pilot project, the first of any states to create such a program.
Newsom says this year’s budget is focused on, “immediate relief for people that have been most impacted by COVID-19 and this pandemic, issues that predated this pandemic.”
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