According to CalMatters Housing, California's state budget is really just a rough starting point, not a precise accounting of how the state actually manages its finances. The problem is pretty clear when you look back at what happened four years ago. Governor Newsom announced California had a massive surplus, but that number was built on a revenue estimation error that was later acknowledged to be way off. By then, lawmakers had already increased spending based on that faulty number, and we've been dealing with deficits ever since. One example of that overshooting is the health care expansion to undocumented immigrants, which ended up costing significantly more than budgeted.
What gets interesting is that if you dig into the detailed addenda attached to the budget, you can actually find some solid data about how California operates financially. These supplements contain specifics like the total number of state employees and information about tax collection across various categories. There's also a particularly useful chart that goes back decades and shows how state spending and employment have tracked with population growth over time.
According to CalMatters, since Newsom took office in 2019, the picture has shifted considerably. The state has added roughly 100,000 positions to its payroll, which represents a significant increase when you measure it against population growth. State spending from the general fund has also climbed substantially as a percentage of total personal income, reaching levels not seen in the previous decades covered by the historical data.
For those who want the most reliable picture of California's finances, the state controller's office publishes a comprehensive financial report filed with the federal government each year. CalMatters notes that this 2024-25 report is particularly valuable because the numbers are audited and verified. This report covers far more agencies and programs than the regular budget, showing a much larger financial picture. One significant finding is the amount the state owes for employee pensions and retiree health benefits, which represents a substantial unfunded liability.
The comprehensive financial report also includes data that's relevant to current policy debates. CalMatters points out that one chart in particular shows how concentrated California's income tax revenue is, with the top one percent of earners by income generating nearly half of all income tax revenues collected statewide.
What I am seeing locally here in the Bay Area is that people are increasingly interested in understanding the true financial health of the state and local government, because it affects everything from property values to local services to their own financial planning. These comprehensive reports give us real data to work with instead of just political promises and budget projections.
