California has a high amount of debt, particularly per household, when compared to (some) other U.S. states. However, the last few years under governor Brown have led to a budget surplus for those years, which is commonly attributed to the tax hikes of Proposition 30, among better spending decisions.

We're looking at a pretty substantial surplus for this year's budget, which will be finalized in June, and lawmakers have different ideas about what to do with it. Governor Brown wants to put it in the rainy day fund, conservatives largely want to enact tax relief for some Californians, and the state's liberal politicians largely want to spend it on other things.

Personally, I'd like if California used at least the bulk of it to pay down some of our unfunded liabilities with regards to pension programs, of which we still have about $275 billion (of over $400 billion in total debt). There are plans to take care of these over the next 3 decades, but settling it a bit earlier never hurt.

Your data is a bit out of date. California has a surplus now.

There is an underfunded pension but the payments aren't due for many years in the future.

California currently has a rainy day fund of $8 billion and a current budget surplus of $6.1 billion.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jerry-browns-legacy-a-6-1-billi...

To landlords, mostly. If you look at the numbers, the deficit has mostly shrunk after some truly huge ones.

Interesting - this article seems to say the opposite:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jerry-browns-legacy-a-6-1-billi...

Not even close to as bad as the world's largest economy and their deficit.

UK has a huge deficit too. Most highly developed countries do.

The US government doesn’t care about deficits, so it would seem.

California budget deficit: $1.6 billion

California GDP: $2.7 trillion

I think California will be fine.