ALAMEDA, Calif. – The five men negotiating California’s long-overdue budget said Friday night that they have come to an agreement.
The state has been without a budget since the fiscal year began July 1, the longest ever such delay.
The pace of the “big five” negotiations -- featuring Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature’s four top party leaders -- picked up over the last two weeks.
Friday, they said they had a deal. The announcement came eight days after the negotiators proclaimed a “framework” for a deal.
“Legislative leaders and the Governor have finally reached an agreement on a no-tax budget that protects California jobs,” Assembly Republican Leader Martin Garrick said in a statement Friday night. “Staff will be drafting the budget language and bills in the coming days, and we plan to have a public hearing on Wednesday and a vote on Thursday.”
They deadlocked for months amid deep differences over how to deal with a projected $18 billion structural deficit in the state general fund. The budget requires two-thirds votes in each house, which means a deal requires buy-in from the Legislature’s Republican minority.
The “big five” negotiators have said nothing publicly about what is in the budget deal, except that there are no tax increases.
Published reports, citing unnamed sources, say the deal involves $3 billion in more optimistic revenue projections.
That includes $1.4 billion by using revenue projections from the Legislative Analyst’s Office, instead of the less-optimistic forecast from the governor’s Department of Finance.
Reports say the budget deal assumes $1.6 billion more from the federal government than the $3.4 billion the governor’s budget had forecast.
