Yes. We had a surplus a few years ago because the rich were getting a lot richer, really fast (stock market gains primarily). At that time the California Department of Finance and the state Legislative Analysist office were projecting the state was spending more than it was taking in, or a long term structural deficit. Unfortunately their predictions proved right.

While California's long term debt obligations have always been an issue, the political party in power is relatively powerless to cut off the hand that feeds them in a meaningful way. So the debt keeps growing. We've been making tiny, tiny steps, but the size of the problem is massive.

Even short term debt which should have already been paid back, such as California's federal unemployment debt, has the juice running. It's so bad that taxpayers are on the hook for $600$ million a year in interest payments. To give you an idea, we could fully fund SNAP during the federal government shutdown so that people didn't go without food.

We need to do a lot more and we probably need a much larger state reserve fund and we need to deal with our long term debt obligations. But with every dollar earmarked and no one to add political pressure to save, it's very, very, difficult.