Related: In the German state of Baden-Württemberg they were miscalculating the number of active teachers for 20 years due to a software error, causing the state to employ 1440 fewer teachers than actually intended.
This is wild. A mistake of this magnitude should result in several positions becoming vacant and many politicians being ineligible for any future offices.
If a government can’t budget accurately everything else they do is likely even less competent. Every number and statistic they report should be treated with suspicion. Without clear data who is to say they are doing anything helpful at all?
The errors were all within the CalPERS pension fund. The pensions are guaranteed by the state, so the fund is notorious for a complete lack of fiduciary duty, and these types of errors track with the general quality of their operation.
Alternatively, since we're spit balling, the administrators and/or accounting staff decided to strategically error on the side of a shortfall because its politically impossible to get the state to fully fund the pension obligations or to stop effectively raiding it.
Recall that funds like this are one of the largest owners of the hedge funds that drive up property values for American homes via their reckless speculation. The state (well states really -- CA is not alone) desperately needs to make more than market returns to guarantee their unfunded pension liabilities.
How about fired for the mistake, but life imprisonment if it's intentionally hidden and not reported by the person who hid it (if you did hide it but reported it before anyone else noticed, back to something closer to a firing than life imprisonment, this provides a relief valve so people don't not report in fear they'll be convicted of hiding it).
You still have strong incentive to reveal the mistake as soon as you find it, since hiding it is much worse.
Given that school budgets are absolutely gutted with mass layoffs this year and next, and the miscalculation looks like 2/3 of the budget shortfall, hiding such a basic and impactful error requires a much better explanation than I see in that article. It looks like it was done to stifle debate about budget allocations, which would be necessary in the circumstances.
The education system seems one of the only places where vastly improving technology over the past 30 years has not translated to cost savings or improved outcomes.
My 1,500-student California high school currently lists 7 administration-team members (principal, executive assistant, three assistant principals, school-facilities manager and food-services manager) and 11 administrative-support members (school data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior-clerical assistant, separate registrar and attendance roles, interventions-support specialist, and others). That doesn't include 4 site maintenance, a network-support and a separate network-systems specialists; a separate media-library specialist; 2 psychologists; a college and career advisor; 4 school counselors; a wellness-space support specialist; and a social science and an athletic director.
That's 34 administrative hirer, one per 44 students. Many of those roles strike me as fluff.
in California there are not more students.. all tiers of schools show falling enrollments, year after year. Except community colleges, where they have discovered that more than 15% of all students are ghost enrolled.
It is just a fact that California schools are laying off a large percentage of personnel and getting rid of many programs. Pink slips by the thousands have been sent out that will take effect in a couple months at the end of the school year. If you don't know that, you are not informed.
Those links are completely irrelevant because they are out of date. Budget had temporarily increased due to the availability of COVID funds, and now there is a very harsh snap in the other direction. Shortfalls are directly linked to actions by the Trump administration, and their downstream impacts. Every state needs to step up and deal with it.
A quick google search of the UNSECO target is "at least 15% of total public expenditure (or 4–6% of GDP)" and both the US (~5%) and California (~4-5% of gdp) already pass that criteria.
The article doesn't really explain the overall budget, for scale it looks like in the 2025-2026 budget year CA planned to spend about $228B compared to $216B revenue ($227B in the previous year).
If you want a vivid illustration (from an adjacent state) about the impact of pessimistic fiscal projections: Oregon has an infamous "kicker" law that refunds income taxes collected in excess of projections (plus a 2% margin). The state faces the same budgetary challenges as California... but can't project too pessimistically lest it leave money off the table.
Oregon's kicker law is a textbook example of bad economic policy, sadly. It essentially means that in boom years the state can't accumulate any general funds for recessions, which is half of the point of a state-level political entity in the first place. Balanced budgets and pay as you go are fabulous over the medium term, but over the short term of a year or two during a disaster or recession, governmental spending is critical as a counterbalance to reduced investment and general employment income.
> in boom years the state can't accumulate any general funds for recessions
Genuine question: have states had the discipline not to raid these coffers in the boom years?
The alternative is borrowing in downturns. That works because during recessions interest rates are low. The opposite problem then manifests, however, which is the state continuing to borrow through the recovery.
Maybe instead of citing shortfalls and surpluses, such laws should cite unemployment and income growth.
California is also required to refund taxpayers if it accumulates too much revenue. The state's spending is capped at some limit set in 1979 with adjustments for inflation and population.
Well maybe they should "project" a certain amount of revenue that goes to savings every year automatically, instead of waiting for a boom year windfall.
Oregon has a biennial budget, so some Oregon employee predicts how much money Oregon will earn over the next 2 to 3 years (which is basically impossible to do), and then Oregon leaders have to come up with a spending plan equal to or less than that revenue estimate.
However, Oregon's costs have no relation to the revenue that the state predicted it would get, so it is constrains the solution space when unforeseen costs or cost trends happen. For example, Oregon predicts a certain amount of revenue, but gets 3% more than the predicted revenue, but that is because prices for everything went up 3% more than expected, now Oregon has less money than it needs to pay its expenses (since it has to return any revenue which was 2% over the estimate).
Oregon is the only jurisdiction I have ever heard of with this kind of strict refund law, and its rigidity seems to be the main issue, along with the 2 year forecast requirement (since forecasting even 1 year is hard enough).
"Gov. Newsom in January projected the state would have to grapple with a $2.9 billion shortfall. The confirmed miscalculation means that shortfall could be much smaller."
So, the title is just plain misleading.
California is less in deficit than they earlier calculated.
> California's legislative leaders have known for months but did not make the issue public.
Why would they give up a chance to make more money from the people? The government never misses an opportunity to pad its coffers. Reminds me of the
CA State Parks department, which squirreled away millions of dollars and then was crying about lack of funding and hence wanted to shut down some parks.
Fun fact: I recently vacationed in Hawaii and couldn’t help but notice, despite groceries costing about 2x, gas there is a dollar cheaper than at home in California. California just can’t get enough tax money.
Related: In the German state of Baden-Württemberg they were miscalculating the number of active teachers for 20 years due to a software error, causing the state to employ 1440 fewer teachers than actually intended.
https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bildung/baden-wuerttemberg-s...
How is that related? That's a long term calculation error vs short term forecasting error.
From my point of view, the Jedi are a state-funded militia coded as a tax exempt non profit!
This is wild. A mistake of this magnitude should result in several positions becoming vacant and many politicians being ineligible for any future offices.
If a government can’t budget accurately everything else they do is likely even less competent. Every number and statistic they report should be treated with suspicion. Without clear data who is to say they are doing anything helpful at all?
The errors were all within the CalPERS pension fund. The pensions are guaranteed by the state, so the fund is notorious for a complete lack of fiduciary duty, and these types of errors track with the general quality of their operation.
Alternatively, since we're spit balling, the administrators and/or accounting staff decided to strategically error on the side of a shortfall because its politically impossible to get the state to fully fund the pension obligations or to stop effectively raiding it.
Recall that funds like this are one of the largest owners of the hedge funds that drive up property values for American homes via their reckless speculation. The state (well states really -- CA is not alone) desperately needs to make more than market returns to guarantee their unfunded pension liabilities.
How about fired for the mistake, but life imprisonment if it's intentionally hidden and not reported by the person who hid it (if you did hide it but reported it before anyone else noticed, back to something closer to a firing than life imprisonment, this provides a relief valve so people don't not report in fear they'll be convicted of hiding it).
You still have strong incentive to reveal the mistake as soon as you find it, since hiding it is much worse.
Given that school budgets are absolutely gutted with mass layoffs this year and next, and the miscalculation looks like 2/3 of the budget shortfall, hiding such a basic and impactful error requires a much better explanation than I see in that article. It looks like it was done to stifle debate about budget allocations, which would be necessary in the circumstances.
The education system seems one of the only places where vastly improving technology over the past 30 years has not translated to cost savings or improved outcomes.
Why would we expect schooling to get…cheaper?
The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing.
> vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers
My 1,500-student California high school currently lists 7 administration-team members (principal, executive assistant, three assistant principals, school-facilities manager and food-services manager) and 11 administrative-support members (school data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior-clerical assistant, separate registrar and attendance roles, interventions-support specialist, and others). That doesn't include 4 site maintenance, a network-support and a separate network-systems specialists; a separate media-library specialist; 2 psychologists; a college and career advisor; 4 school counselors; a wellness-space support specialist; and a social science and an athletic director.
That's 34 administrative hirer, one per 44 students. Many of those roles strike me as fluff.
Not to mention there are more students.
in California there are not more students.. all tiers of schools show falling enrollments, year after year. Except community colleges, where they have discovered that more than 15% of all students are ghost enrolled.
> Given that school budgets are absolutely gutted
What now?
https://edsource.org/2026/how-california-compares-to-other-s...
https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti...
It is just a fact that California schools are laying off a large percentage of personnel and getting rid of many programs. Pink slips by the thousands have been sent out that will take effect in a couple months at the end of the school year. If you don't know that, you are not informed.
Those links are completely irrelevant because they are out of date. Budget had temporarily increased due to the availability of COVID funds, and now there is a very harsh snap in the other direction. Shortfalls are directly linked to actions by the Trump administration, and their downstream impacts. Every state needs to step up and deal with it.
Here is one example of how that is happening, it is a far more significant problem than just this: https://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr25/yr25rel35.asp
Compared to cost of living though?
Your own link says CA spends less than UNESCO’s 15.0% standard.
Also, you could frame this in a much more information dense way by making an active claim about something instead of just spamming a bunch of links.
A quick google search of the UNSECO target is "at least 15% of total public expenditure (or 4–6% of GDP)" and both the US (~5%) and California (~4-5% of gdp) already pass that criteria.
The UNESCO target is calibrated for developing countries. Few developed countries spend that much on non-tertiary education: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/public-spending-on-e.... Canada spends about 3.3%, less than California.
(I think your numbers include tertiary education. My numbers are K-12 only. I’m not sure which of those the UNESCO target is based on.)
The confusion/disconnect between those two benchmarks suggests something about the size of CA's public expenditure...
The UNESCO standard is meant for developing countries.
In 2021, California spent about $121 billion on K-12, out of a GDP of $3.4 trillion, or about 3.5% of state GDP. That puts it above the OECD average of 3.3%, around the same as France at 3.5%. blob:https://www.oecd.org/702dcc03-0749-41b6-af41-112fd1af1bfb. (This is the parent page: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/public-spending-on-e.... You have to select non-tertiary education, which is basically what we call K-12.)
The article doesn't really explain the overall budget, for scale it looks like in the 2025-2026 budget year CA planned to spend about $228B compared to $216B revenue ($227B in the previous year).
https://ebudget.ca.gov/2025-26/pdf/Enacted/BudgetSummary/Sum...
If you want a vivid illustration (from an adjacent state) about the impact of pessimistic fiscal projections: Oregon has an infamous "kicker" law that refunds income taxes collected in excess of projections (plus a 2% margin). The state faces the same budgetary challenges as California... but can't project too pessimistically lest it leave money off the table.
Oregon's kicker law is a textbook example of bad economic policy, sadly. It essentially means that in boom years the state can't accumulate any general funds for recessions, which is half of the point of a state-level political entity in the first place. Balanced budgets and pay as you go are fabulous over the medium term, but over the short term of a year or two during a disaster or recession, governmental spending is critical as a counterbalance to reduced investment and general employment income.
> in boom years the state can't accumulate any general funds for recessions
Genuine question: have states had the discipline not to raid these coffers in the boom years?
The alternative is borrowing in downturns. That works because during recessions interest rates are low. The opposite problem then manifests, however, which is the state continuing to borrow through the recovery.
Maybe instead of citing shortfalls and surpluses, such laws should cite unemployment and income growth.
California is also required to refund taxpayers if it accumulates too much revenue. The state's spending is capped at some limit set in 1979 with adjustments for inflation and population.
https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/qa-why-hitting-gann-li...
Well maybe they should "project" a certain amount of revenue that goes to savings every year automatically, instead of waiting for a boom year windfall.
> Oregon's kicker law is a textbook example of bad economic policy, sadly
You must be talking about non-economic textbooks, otherwise this makes no sense.
Oregon has a biennial budget, so some Oregon employee predicts how much money Oregon will earn over the next 2 to 3 years (which is basically impossible to do), and then Oregon leaders have to come up with a spending plan equal to or less than that revenue estimate.
However, Oregon's costs have no relation to the revenue that the state predicted it would get, so it is constrains the solution space when unforeseen costs or cost trends happen. For example, Oregon predicts a certain amount of revenue, but gets 3% more than the predicted revenue, but that is because prices for everything went up 3% more than expected, now Oregon has less money than it needs to pay its expenses (since it has to return any revenue which was 2% over the estimate).
Oregon is the only jurisdiction I have ever heard of with this kind of strict refund law, and its rigidity seems to be the main issue, along with the 2 year forecast requirement (since forecasting even 1 year is hard enough).
"Gov. Newsom in January projected the state would have to grapple with a $2.9 billion shortfall. The confirmed miscalculation means that shortfall could be much smaller."
So, the title is just plain misleading.
California is less in deficit than they earlier calculated.
This but for government:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/z4meh0/game_design...
Didn't something like this just happen last year (or year before) but in the opposite direction?
A little “bank error in your favor” sitchu. We love to see it.
"See what?" --Gavin
Oops! They're still far easier to deal with than any federal agency.
2 billion surplus? that's good for about 150 linear feet of high speed rail track in the middle of Salinas.
it’s less than 1% of the budget, and the state keeps overspending. Don’t get too optimistic
Give it back?
Another indicator that the administration hasn't got a fucking clue what or where their (your) money goes.
> California's legislative leaders have known for months but did not make the issue public.
Why would they give up a chance to make more money from the people? The government never misses an opportunity to pad its coffers. Reminds me of the CA State Parks department, which squirreled away millions of dollars and then was crying about lack of funding and hence wanted to shut down some parks.
Fun fact: I recently vacationed in Hawaii and couldn’t help but notice, despite groceries costing about 2x, gas there is a dollar cheaper than at home in California. California just can’t get enough tax money.