Brown Warns of School Cuts If Taxes Rejected California faces a smaller budget deficit in the coming fiscal year but will require nearly $5 billion in cuts to public education if voters reject Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to raise taxes in the fall, the governor's office said Thursday in releasing its budget proposal for the 2012-13 fiscal year. The governor's office projected the state's budget deficit for the fiscal year starting July 1 at $9.2 billion, much more manageable than the $26.6 billion deficit the Legislature closed for the current year. The number was first reported by the Los Angeles Times after the governor's Department of Finance mistakenly posted the budget document online. It has since been removed. The total general fund budget for the coming year is $92.5 billion, about $7 billion more than the current year. To address California's ongoing shortfall, Brown has proposed raising the income tax on those who earn $250,000 or more a year and boosting the state sales tax by a half cent. He is trying to gather support for a November ballot initiative. If voters reject those tax increases, Brown's budget says he will call for an automatic cut of $4.8 billion from public education. That is the equal to three weeks of school. Earlier Thursday, Brown told reporters "there'll be a lot of cuts" if his initiative fails. Cuts are never nice, because government does a lot of good things. But we'll have the tax measure proposal, we'll have some cuts, and then we'll have some trigger cuts in the event that the tax measure does not succeed," he said. His office has scheduled a news conference for Thursday afternoon to discuss his budget plan in greater detail.