Auditor: California budget system overhaul will cost $1B

SACRAMENTO (AP) — The cost of California's vast overhaul of its budget and financial accounting system has ballooned to over $1 billion while next year's deadline for completing the project is unrealistic, a state auditor's report said Tuesday. The Financial Information System for California (FI$Cal) was first envisioned in 2005. It would combine diverse accounting, budgeting, cash management and procurement operations into a single modernized system. But the project budget has increased by more than $400 million since 2012. The latest plan update this year ignores potentially tens of millions of dollars in additional expenses, such as staffing, related to the transition from older systems to the new one, State Auditor Elaine M. Howle wrote in a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and the stat