State law requires the Governor to submit his budget plan by January 10th of each year. That means the final few weeks of December are packed at the department of finance.
"Caffeine is involved, yes."
H.D Palmer is with the department. He says it takes lots of pizza - and perseverance. Right now staffers are analyzing Governor-elect Jerry Brown's spending decisions and translating them into legislative language.
"Our budget operations support unit regularly pulls late-nights. 1, 2, 3 in the morning. And they're working extremely hard under difficult conditions."
He says people in the department prepare by getting all of their Christmas shopping done online - or very early. The budget deficit over the next year-and-a-half could be as large as 28 billion dollars. Governor-elect Brown has warned his proposal will be rough.
