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More on California Fiscal Policy: A Quick Glance at Bond Debt -- What's Already on the Markets?
More on California Fiscal Policy: A Quick Glance at Bond Debt -- What's Already on the Markets?
Published December 10, 2013
When the State Treasurer's Office issued its annual debt report in October, it identified all authorized debt with outstanding balances. For all General Fund-supported General Obligation (GO) debt, the report listed debt totaling $74.5 billion (as of June 30, 2013). This debt had been authorized by state voters in statewide elections going back to November 1974.
The report also identified debt authorized by the voters but not issued. The report detailed about $30 billion in General Fund-supported debt that has been authorized but not yet sold. Two bond measures account for 60 percent of the total value of unissued debt -- more than $9 billion associated with the high-speed rail bond authorized in November 2008 and the transportation bond authorized in November 2006. If the state were to sell all the unissued debt associated with these two measures, the state's bonded indebtedness would increase by about $17.7 billion.
Figure 2 shows the seven measures with the highest amount of unissued debt. Of these, voters approved five of the measures in November 2006, as illustrated in the red bars. The unissued debt from this election is $16 billion, and more than half the total unissued GO debt.
The green bar shows that the state still has not sold about $1.6 billion of the authorized stem-cell bonds. All other debt authorized and unissued -- associated with bond elections dating to before Proposition 13 passed -- account for $5.9 billion, or about 20 percent of all authorized and unissued debt.
Related Reading:
Figure 2: Authorized But Unissued Debt
General Obligation Bonds as of June 30, 2013 (Non-Self Liquidating) Authorized in Statewide Elections, ($ in Billions)
(Blue=2008, Red=2006, Green=2004, Black=All Other Years)
Source: State Treasurer's Office