Walters: Lagging revenue continues to drive California budget deficit

As the June 15 constitutional deadline for enacting a 2024-25 state budget approaches, the good news for Gov. Gavin Newsom is that all-important income tax revenues in April slightly exceeded the administration’s $16.3 billion assumption.

Even so, the bad news is that overall revenues from income, sales and corporate taxes are still running $6 billion behind what Newsom’s January budget projected for the current fiscal year, meaning that cumulative deficit will be substantially more than...