SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Even as California lawmakers passed a budget Friday to end an unprecedented 100-day impasse, their spending plan looked to be so tenuous that the next governor is expected to face a multibillion-dollar deficit from the moment he or she steps into office next year.
Two-thirds of the budget solutions expected to be signed soon by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are based on one-time or temporary money — some of which might never materialize.
That will leave California to face “sizable annual budget problems in 2011-12 and beyond,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office said in a report issued after the Senate passed the main budget bill Friday morning.
Lawmakers bridged a $19 billion shortfall, more than 20 percent of the $87.5 billion general-fund spending plan. It includes no tax or fee increases but uses a combination of cuts, funding shifts, delayed corporate tax breaks and assumptions about money the state hopes to receive.
Among those assumptions is $5.4 billion in new federal funding, which is $4 billion more than the state has received so far this year and $2 billion more than Schwarzenegger projected in the revised budget proposal he released in May.
Most of the money has not been authorized by Congress, which could change into Republican hands in November.
The heavy reliance on assumed federal money drew criticism from California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, who called California’s budget “an embarrassment.”
“It’s full of false assumptions and failed gimmicks,” Issa said.
Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and state lawmakers acknowledge there are no guarantees the state will collect that much more from the federal government.
In crafting their tardy budget deal, the governor and the legislative leaders from the Assembly and Senate also assumed the state will take in $1.4 billion in additional tax revenue if the economy improves and will net $1.2 billion from selling 11 state properties.
