The California Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee Hearing on the Legislative Analyst Report is our site of the day

Earlier today the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee met and received testimony from the Legislative Analyst's Office and the Schwarzenegger Administration on California's growing budget problems which estimates indicate may have a $10 billion deficit in the coming fiscal year with revenues also off for the current budget.

Elizabeth Hill, the Legislative Analyst herself, and Vincent Brown, the Chief Deputy Director from the Governor's Department of Finance, whose responsibility is the California Budget, both testified and fielded questions and comments from the Committee.

If you go to the Cal Channel archives for today or click on this link, starting about 18 minutes into the tape, you get an excellent walkthrough of the budgetary problems facing California and the report issued earlier this month by the Legislative Analyst's Office that warns of the deficit and the need to take action.

You may want to have a copy of that report open online: California's Fiscal Outlook: LAO Projections, 2007-08 Through 2012-13, as comments and questions referenced specific passages and charts in it.

The Legislative Analyst's Office has been providing fiscal and policy advice to the Legislature for more than 65 years. In recent years it has provided forecasts of revenues and expenditures and is known for its nonpartisan analyses of the state budget.

This is a preview of what will be playing out in 2008, probably with less civility as tensions rise and nerve fray over what to do in the most important legislation enacted each year--the budget. In fact, legislation or administrative changes are expected before then.