Back in January, California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed a $222 billion dollar state budget but the Golden State’s fiscal picture has changed drastically due to the COVID-19 outbreak. State Senator and Chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, Holly Mitchell of Los Angeles, tells Inside the Issues she knows Californians are afraid and don’t know what’s next, but she has hope. 

“I'm proud not only to be a policymaker in California but a Californian right now because we are seeing what leadership looks like. I’m watching the Governor’s daily pressers where he walks us through in real language so everybody understands what he’s doing, what his team is working on to get us through this pandemic,” she said.

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Sen. Mitchell came into the legislature in 2010, right at the end of the Great Recession and voted on a couple budgets at that time that levied heavy cuts on California residents including Medi-Cal and public education but she said they are working to avoid those cuts this time around.

“We as policymakers, working with the current administration and the previous administration, really managed these budgets in the last few years in a strategic way,” she said. “We've been smart. We’ve put money away in a variety of rainy day funds. I led the effort on the Senate side to create a rainy day fund for the entitlement programs, the kinds of programs that people need the most when we’re experiencing a recession.” 

She said those who are likely to feel the financial hardships from the coronavirus outbreak are people in underrepresented communities across California.

“Many of whom have not fully recovered from the state’s Great Recession. Many of whom lost jobs or lost homes or were unemployed in the mid-2000s who haven’t fully recovered, this has come and will be yet another tsunami, quite frankly, in their lives.”

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She said the federal stimulus package that was passed in response to this will have a major impact on California and give the state the resources to help with employment and housing support.

Sen. Mitchell also talks about how corporations and companies, large and small, are stepping up to help provide facilities or materials to provide the resources needed to hospitals with the equipment needed to keep them up and running. 

Watch the clip above for more.

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