In effect, the legal opinion charts a future where the rainy-day fund is essentially divided into two parts: money that’s required to be there and hard to spend, and money that was put into the account just to be prudent and can be spent any time lawmakers see fit. Newsom’s own budget ledger already has two entries for the reserve fund: one showing total deposits and a subset of those that are mandatory.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 13, 2019 08:03 UTC