(CALMATTERS) – With less than a week before the June 15 deadline for Newsom and lawmakers to solidify a budget deal, arguments over how the state should spend its record surplus are coming in fast and furious. Here’s a look at some key demands:
- Community college financial officers and professorsare divided over lawmakers’ plan to give the sprawling 116-campus system $170 million to hire 2,000 full-time faculty. CalMatters’ Mikhail Zinshteyn explores why.
- Advocates are pushing Newsom and lawmakers to expand health care, food assistance and financial aid to undocumented immigrants, CalMatters’ Jacqueline Garcia reports.
- Hundreds of child care providers, parents, and advocates, in addition to Democratic state Sen. Monique Limón of Santa Barbara, marched to the state Capitol on Tuesday to urge Newsom to raise wages for child care providers.
- A group of Democratic state lawmakers urged Newsom in a Tuesday letter to expand his universal basic income pilot program to farmworkers displaced by drought and give supplemental guaranteed income to those whose hours were reduced.
- Another group of Democratic state lawmakers called on Newsom to increase budget reserves.
- The California State Association of Counties and business groups urged lawmakers to adopt Newsom’s proposed broadband plan — rather than their own — in a Tuesday email with the subject line “Why is the (Assembly) Speaker Choosing Telecoms over Californians?”
- Meanwhile, California’s prison guards union — a big contributor to Newsom’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign — secured a new contract that contains nearly $5,000 in pandemic bonuses plus extra paid time off.