Mr. Brown’s news was hailed on both sides of the political aisle. “This is a proposal that clearly shows California has turned the corner,” said John A. Pérez, a Democrat who is the State Assembly’s speaker.

Connie Conway, the Assembly’s Republican leader, said it was “good news for taxpayers that the state has made progress in getting our financial house in order.”

“But we haven’t fully solved our budget problems just yet,” she said.

The budgetary distress has meant that, for years, the Legislature has battled over what to cut or, in some cases, what kind of maneuvers might be appropriate to avoid cuts. Good news or not, the announcement means that more, albeit different, kinds of battles were in the offing, lawmakers and Mr. Brown said.

Democrats now control two-thirds of the Assembly and Senate, and some of them have talked about restoring at least some of the social service cuts, like dental care for the poor, that were imposed to bring the state to this point, Mr. Brown said he understood the impulse to repair broken social services, but he warned against returning to a boom-and-bust pattern of spending during the good years, only to later struggle through debt.

“We have to live within the means we have; otherwise we get to that situation where you get red ink and you go back to cuts,” he said. “I want to avoid the booms and the bust, the borrow and the spend, where we make the promise and then we take back.”

Mr. Brown, who has always presented himself as something of a moderate in his party, suggested that in the months ahead, he would be an enforcer.