Budget bill passes Legislature

If delivered to Governor on Saturday, June 15, he will have until June 27 to act on the bill

On Thursday, June 13, both houses of the Legislature passed AB 107, the Budget Act of 2024. Both houses also approved SB 154 and SB 167, which are budget-related bills. This earlier post linked to analyses of the legislative budget plan.

As noted in the Assembly Budget Committee Floor Report, this is not a placeholder budget. It is budget legislation representing the Legislature’s priorities in negotiations with the Governor. The June 15 deadline was created in a 1970 voter-approved measure to require a legislative budget bill for gubernatorial action about two weeks before the start of the state fiscal year. If AB 107 is delivered to the Governor on Saturday, June 15, the Governor will have until Thursday, June 27—a few days before the July 1 start of the 2024-25 fiscal year—to act on the bill.

Budget negotiations between the Governor and legislative leaders continue. The legislative budget bill, AB 107, may be amended later via a “budget bill junior” (likely AB/SB 108) to reflect subsequent budget compromises between the Legislature and the Governor. In addition to SB 154 and SB 167, other bills related to the budget (“trailer bills”, authorized by Section 12 of Article IV of the Constitution) will be introduced in the coming weeks with statutory changes needed to implement the budget plan. Most of the content of the trailer bills has been posted online in some form at the Department of Finance website for the past several weeks or months, and budget proposals have been discussed in dozens of budget subcommittee hearings.