[ddoolin]

California has a high amount of debt, particularly per household, when compared to (some) other U.S. states. However, the last few years under governor Brown have led to a budget surplus for those years, which is commonly attributed to the tax hikes of Proposition 30, among better spending decisions.

We're looking at a pretty substantial surplus for this year's budget, which will be finalized in June, and lawmakers have different ideas about what to do with it. Governor Brown wants to put it in the rainy day fund, conservatives largely want to enact tax relief for some Californians, and the state's liberal politicians largely want to spend it on other things.

Personally, I'd like if California used at least the bulk of it to pay down some of our unfunded liabilities with regards to pension programs, of which we still have about $275 billion (of over $400 billion in total debt). There are plans to take care of these over the next 3 decades, but settling it a bit earlier never hurt.

[nradov]

Exactly. Fund the existing pension liabilities now while money is relatively cheap. Then transition all state employees to defined contribution retirement plans going forward so that it will be closer become impossible to ever have underfunded pension plans in the future.

[DrScump]

  the last few years under governor Brown have led to a budget surplus for those years

no, it wasn't a surplus. 2017 showed a $1.6 Billion deficit[0].

[0] http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-jerry-brown-budge...

[ddoolin]

You're right -- due to some (must-have-been-pretty-awful) miscalculations about the cost of a certain program that pushed it into deficit territory. My mistake! I was also considering 2017 as this year since a budget spans two years.

For completeness, CA roughly carried a deficit from '02-'03 to '12-'13, and then roughly a surplus from '13-'14 onwards, except for 2017.