Less than a week after the Legislative Analysis Service predicted that California would face a $68 billion deficit, Gov.Gavin Newsom’s Treasury Department asked state officials to make financial sacrifices to shore up the budget.asking you to pay.
The Treasury Department announced the spending freeze Tuesday in a budget letter addressed to all secretaries, directors, and heads of budget, accounting, business services, and human resources departments.The freeze applies to everything from non-essential travel to replacing printers, vehicles and office supplies.
The budget letter emphasizes the critical need for efficient and effective state government operations. It calls for immediate actions across all state entities to cut expenditures and identify operational savings.
The letter announces the suspension of California’s leave buyback program for all except correctional employees represented by the California Correctional Peace Officers’ Association, who have a contract allowing an annual buyback of up to 80 hours of leave.
State employees typically have the option to cash out their vacation and annual leave once a year to reduce their state leave balance.Having too many vacation days on the books can hurt a state’s finances in the long run, because when employees leave the civil service, they are paid a higher salary for their remaining vacation time.
The letter states that the buyback program will be discontinued in the 2023-24 financial year, which will run until the end of June 2024.
What other spending cuts will departments make?
The letter directs department heads not to enter into new contracts or agreements to lease or purchase new equipment, goods or services.
All non-essential IT purchases, such as a new copier or new mobile phone, should be cancelled.
“Minimal office supplies must be ordered and kept in stock,” the letter reads.“Department purchasing managers must carefully review all office supply orders to ensure supplies.”
The budget document directs departments to reevaluate costs associated with current information technology projects.
This new mandate could lead to changes like the Department of Employment Development’s EDDNext, a multibillion-dollar bet to overhaul the state’s burdensome unemployment and disability pension system, and the current California payroll system., it is unclear how this will affect the long-awaited and expensive project.of the state controller.
The latter aims to bring the state’s outdated payroll process into his 21st century.Neither department immediately responded to questions about how the budget document would affect their respective project schedules.
