The morning after the election, with Proposition 30 assured of a victory, Brown said this on CBS:

Brown: "We had a massive budget deficit of $27 billion, and I've cut that thing and we'll be in balance.  This January, we'll have the first balanced budget, probably, since 1998."

Well … not quite, says Steve Boilard with Sacramento State's Center for California Studies.  He points to a recent projection from the non-partisan legislative analyst's office that says the deficit hasn't gone away just yet.

Boilard: "It's a very small imbalance of somewhere around $2 billion, which is much smaller than the imbalance we've had in recent years.  But no, it's imbalanced."

California could see a surplus within the next couple of years - but only if the economy continues to recover and lawmakers don't increase state spending.