California legislators met the letter of the law in passing the budget by Monday's deadline, but the state is a long way from a final spending plan.
May is when budget talks usually get serious in California, which has a budget highly dependent on income and capital gains taxes.
The deal to buy 200 million masks a month will help California's medical workers while pressuring its state budget.
Municipal bond issuance was $67.88 billion after the first two months of 2020 and was on pace to easily eclipse the $400 billion mark — then COVID-19 completely turned the market upside down.
The Department of Finance told department heads it will be re-evaluating budget requests under a workload budget scenario.
The timing of a $1.5 billion deal California had planned to price Thursday is no longer firm amid massive dislocations in the markets.
The stock market plunge amid the COVID-19 pandemic increases the risk of a revenue shock for California and other states that depend on capital gains taxes.
The municipal market was hammered Wednesday by the COVID-19 pandemic with a more than quarter point correction in AAA benchmarks, issuers pulling deals off the shelves and more reports of pricing and evaluation confusion.
As fear and uncertainty over COVID-19 rapidly grow, it has sent yields for both municipals and Treasuries to never before seen low levels — begging the question if we could see zero or negative yields here in the States?
The world remains on edge about the rapidly spreading COVID-19 and those fears once again have Treasury yields digging down even deeper. COVID-19 fears have now impacted fund flows, as municipals suffers outflows for the first time in 60 weeks.