Number 1: Release Governor's Budget no later than January 10th.
Number 2: Review final budget documents.
Number 3: Flow documents to budget bill.
"This is unlike other Christmas lists I've seen"
That's HD Palmer with California's Department of Finance talking about the list of work that must get done by January 10th .…each one requiring long hours and late nights for the 440 working "elves" in the department.
PALMER: "There are literally hundreds of decisions that have to be made, hundreds of deadlines that have to be met, if you take the full list of what we have to do and look at a binder it's probably about the size of the launch sequence for the space shuttle"
One giant gift on Santa's sled this year…a budget deficit much smaller than those of Christmases past.