California’s General Fund receipts for June came in both better and worse than expected; they beat May Revision estimates by $440 million, but fell $350 million short of the enacted budget’s assumption of $1.2 billion in extra revenue for May and June combined.
The unequivocal good news is that the General Fund took in $1.8 billion more than it disbursed for the fiscal year as a whole. And 2010-11 receipts ended $6.6 billion (+7.7%) higher than in 2009-10.
While ending the year with $1.8 billion more in receipts than disbursements is good, the state entered the 2010-11 fiscal year with a $9.9 billion deficit, so the surplus reduces that combined deficit to $8.2 billion (with rounding). At least the numbers are moving in the right direction.
Much of the economic news is mixed these days. New car registrations are up over last year, but single-family home prices and sales are both down. Employment is not improving nearly as much as economists would hope, but corporate efficiency and productivity are so improved that the California’s economic activity has returned to its pre-recession peak, despite employing about 1.3 million fewer workers.
Now that the fiscal year is over, we’ll have a chance to compare the year just behind us with those farther back. Keep an eye out for a follow-up post in the days to come.
Geoffrey Neill is CSAC’s legislative analyst for revenue & tax issues. He can be reached at gneill.at.counties.org.