California Legislature Issues Revised Budget Proposal

The California state legislature is pushing back on Governor Newsom’s proposed budget, countering proposed cuts to active transportation and safe streets programs.

As Melanie Curry explains in Streetsblog California, the legislature’s plan creates a “Projected Surplus Temporary Holding Account” that would hold off on disbursing projected surplus funds until it’s clear they will materialize. Instead of cutting the Active Transportation Program by $1 billion as the governor proposed, the plan proposes funding it from the State Highway Account, which advocates say should more heavily fund multimodal transportation projects.

“In terms of public transit, the Governor had proposed delaying $2.1 billion for the Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program (TIRCP) from 2021-22 to later years, and cutting it by $148 million.” The legislature’s plan rejects the cut, but supports the proposed delay and the change of the funding source from the state’s general fund to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). The legislature’s plan also supports the governor’s proposal to delay Zero Emission Transit Capital Program funding. 

Nonprofit NextGen California expressed concern that both proposals signal “the end of California’s brief effort to expand climate investments beyond last decade’s zero-sum approach,” saying the shifts to GGRF funding amount to “cuts to the state’s total level of climate investment.”