That said, the new $203 billion proposed budget Newsom presented Thursday — a considerable reduction from the $222.2 billion document he introduced Jan. 10 — may also bring some good news for IT and innovation. Among the takeaways:
• The California Department of Technology (CDT), the state’s central IT shop, will share in the belt-tightening. CDT’s FY 2020-2021 budget proposed in January was nearly $444 million. Per the May Revision, the department would trim about .8 percent or more than $3.6 million, dropping to just over $440 million. That's still well above last year's adopted department budget of nearly $402 million. Part of that savings would likely come in the area of staffing. CDT would shed seven positions, moving from 872 to 865, a change of .8 percent — though it’s not known exactly how that would be achieved.
• Newsom’s new Office of Digital Innovation (ODI) will mark its first anniversary when this budget is approved by June 15. Like CDT, ODI is under the umbrella of the California Government Operations Agency (GovOps). CDT, however, is a separate department, whereas ODI’s proposed budget comes under the Secretary for GovOps, which was not cut in the May Revision. ODI is similarly unmoved; its proposed budget preserves its 50 staff positions and gives it nearly $15.1 million. That sounds like a considerable drop from last year’s $26.2 million, but isn’t; it reflects the removal of a one-time $10 million appropriation from the Innovation Fund, a staffer told Techwire.
• The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) would see its budget drop by 3.6 percent, from about $2.7 billion to about $2.6 billion. Technology, however, is still important to the department. Reiterating a point Newsom made abundantly clear Thursday, H.D. Palmer, Department of Finance deputy director for external affairs, told Techwire the cut “underscores the importance of the federal government being a full partner with states by providing additional resources so that we can maintain adequate budgets for core services for government, such as what Cal Fire provides.”
Among its tech initiatives, the budget still apparently includes, as it did in January, $5.6 million from the General Fund in FY 2020-21 and $3.6 million ongoing, for Cal Fire to stand up and run the Wildfire Forecast and Threat Intelligence Integration Center, as specified by state Sen. Bill Dodd’s, D-Napa, Senate Bill 209, which the governor signed Oct. 2. The center would be jointly run by the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) and Cal Fire, and would be California’s “integrated central organizing hub for wildfire forecasting, weather information, and threat intelligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination,” per the bill. It would also coordinate wildfire threat intelligence and data sharing, and create a statewide wildfire forecast and threat intelligence strategy.
The budget also includes $5 million in one-time General Fund monies for a research grant to California State University, San Marcos, for the study of “enhanced firefighting equipment and strategies,” to better protect firefighters from wildfire conditions “in the wildland urban interface.”
• CalOES would get a cut, too, if the Legislature approves this budget. Its budget of $1.8 billion proposed in January would drop to more than $1.7 billion, a 4.6 percent trim. That budget would apparently still include $7.6 million from the General Fund in 2020-21 and $8.1 million ongoing to increase capacity at the California Cybersecurity Integration Center — part of a collaboration that would include resources for CDT, the California Highway Patrol and the California Military Department.
