As for the surplus claims: Of course the guy who supported the ballot initiative is going to say it's going to run a surplus.The independent Legislative Analyst's Office, which had previously said Brown's budget would have had a $1.9 billion shortfall in November, now says that it is roughly in balance due to changes in income tax:
http://lao.ca.gov/reports/2013/bud/budget-overview/budget-ov...
If your method of balancing the budget is always asking for more money, you haven't really balanced the budget.
How is increasing revenues not a valid way of balancing a budget? And always asking for more money? Reagan raised the top income tax bracket in California from 7% to 10%. It now stands at 10.3%.
What are you going to do in a few years when those tax hikes expire, and you suddenly lose the same amount of revenue? I look forward to a few years when we begin to hear the claim in that we need to make the temporary hikes permanent, because we are running out of money again.
Considering most of the budget deficit is mostly due to California's substantial social safety net being engaged by the Great Recession, as long as the economy continues to improve, California will probably get by fine with the increased revenues of more people working and lessened burden of people applying for medicaid and unemployment insurance.