{"id":274196,"date":"2026-04-18T13:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T13:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/274196\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T13:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T13:23:07","slug":"gov-newsoms-administration-miscalculated-the-state-budget-to-the-tune-of-2-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/274196\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Newsom’s administration miscalculated the state budget to the tune of $2 Billion"},"content":{"rendered":"

California\u2019s budget mess just got a whole lot messier<\/a> \u2014 and a whole lot more embarrassing.<\/p>\n

Top lawmakers sat on a staggering $2 billion accounting blunder for months<\/a> while publicly warning of a looming budget crunch, according to a bombshell memo that\u2019s now blowing the lid off the quiet deception.<\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s administration built its January budget proposal around a projected $2.9 billion shortfall<\/a> \u2014 but that figure was quietly thrown into doubt after officials discovered they\u2019d badly botched the math tied to the state\u2019s massive pension system, CalPERS.<\/p>\n

Instead of sounding the alarm, legislative leaders kept the mistake under wraps.<\/p>\n

Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The error \u2014 actually two separate miscalculations totaling roughly $2 billion \u2014 was flagged as far back as February by the state\u2019s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office, led by Gabe Petek. Yet despite months of budget hearings and public hand-wringing over deficits<\/a>, the public was left in the dark.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the size and complexity of California\u2019s budget, it is not uncommon that we come across errors stemming from calculation mistakes or formula errors etc,\u201d Petek said to KCRA 3 on Friday<\/a>. \u201cPart of the role of our office is to serve as a check on the administration\u2019s budget calculations. So, in the case of this CalPERS example, you are correct, we did identify a double-counting error and given that this error is on the larger side, we notified the Legislature of it for their situational awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still unclear why neither lawmakers nor Newsom\u2019s team bothered to come clean while hammering out the state\u2019s spending plan behind closed doors.<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s camp is now scrambling to downplay the fiasco, insisting it wasn\u2019t really a mistake at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t a calculation error \u2013 it\u2019s revision to better estimate how these payments are made,\u201d said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the governor\u2019s Department of Finance. \u201cWe told legislative leaders and the LAO back in February that we would update how we estimate these payments once this issue was identified. We\u2019ve already made that adjustment, and it will be reflected in the revised budget next month.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans aren\u2019t buying it \u2014 and they\u2019re hammering Democrats for what they see as a pattern of secrecy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis administration continues its track record of lacking transparency, preferring to keep the legislature and the public in the dark to avoid having to justify cuts while spending millions on their pet projects,\u201d said Assemblyman David Tangipa, R-Fresno, who is the vice chairman of the Assembly\u2019s Budget Committee.<\/p>\n

AP<\/p>\n

X\/@CAgovernor<\/p>\n

When pressed on why no one spoke up, officials offered little clarity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are tracked in January and May budget revisions from the administration. This is standard practice,\u201d said Jason Sisney, the state budget advisor for Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas.<\/p>\n

But when asked whether it\u2019s \u201cstandard practice\u201d to keep a multibillion-dollar mistake quiet, Sisney went silent.<\/p>\n

With Newsom\u2019s revised budget due next month, the stunning error \u2014 and the months-long hush around it \u2014 is now front and center as lawmakers brace for yet another bruising budget fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California\u2019s budget mess just got a whole lot messier \u2014 and a whole lot more embarrassing. Top lawmakers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15404,7,9,8,1751,457,30096,4182,13438,3586],"class_list":["post-274196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-accounting","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-democrats","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-math","tag-metro","tag-state-budget","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}