Liberal Heartache: California's budget surplus starting to look like an anomaly...

The January $5 billion revenue bump is likely due to tax law changes and will not repeat...

Via Hot Air:

The only issue being that, on second thought, that surplus might not be as wonderful as they originally supposed; Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget office has a new report out cautioning that the $5 billion revenue bump in January might just be the result of an accounting anomaly and not any systemic budgeting victory. The LA Times reports:

The revenue bump was historic. But the question for budget experts was whether lawmakers could begin allocating the windfall toward government programs and tax breaks — or whether the money amounted to an accounting anomaly.
Brown’s budget office now advises in an official cash report that it is probably the latter. …
The report says the extra money was “likely the result of major tax law changes at the federal and state level having a significant impact in the timing of revenue receipts.”

I.e., in light of the still higher taxes on the wealthy for which the state voted in November, certain taxpayers were paying off portions of their bills early in order to get some of their income off of the books before the start of the new year — meaning that January’s surge will be offset by an April dip.