There’s been much speculation about the financial damage to California following Elon Musk’s high-profile exit from the Golden State announced Tuesday. But there’s more — and more deeply — unsettling news about California: A state auditor tells National Review that California’s economic fundamentals are so unstable that he’s unable to predict repayment of a key federal loan. “Our earlier...
For years, the state’s auditor had issued warnings about the unemployment office’s vulnerabilities. No one, certainly not Su, acted on that intelligence. Thirteen months after President Biden announced it was his “honor to nominate Julie Su to be our country’s next Secretary of Labor,” there’s good news, bad news, and even worse bad news to report. Among those...
Last spring, when I wrote “The Rise of Zombie Cities,” I thought that, by now, some of my statements would have been proven prophetic. In the article, I discussed the results of the California State Auditor’s 2022 report on the “Fiscal Health of Cities.” I also noted several negative trends affecting city finances, such as...
Like San Francisco, the Bay Area City of Oakland is facing major budget woes. Mayor Sheng Thao’s proposed budget for 2023-25 released last month reveals the city is facing a $360 million shortfall, the largest budget deficit in Oakland’s history. The proposed budget for FY 2023-24 and 2024-25 plans for total expenditures of over $2.1...
The State of California isn’t the only one scrambling to prepare a budget while staring down a deficit. Several Bay Area municipalities are also struggling with their own budget problems, San Francisco chief among them. San Francisco’s 2022-23 budget and next year’s 2023-24 budget total approximately $14 billion each. On March 31, the San Francisco...
When the California State Auditor’s Office released its annual report on the “Fiscal Health of California Cities” in fall 2022, most city officials and journalists focused on the blunt financial risk rating results and the relative position of their city organization amongst the 431 cities analyzed. But there is more that we can learn from...
As with transparency, accountability is championed in government settings. Government officials and employees must be accountable to the public for the decisions they make and the money they spend, but what is really meant by accountability, and how should we think about it in a local government context? The best description of accountability that I...
Just a few months ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom was bragging about California’s “$100 billion budget surplus.” At the same time, the California Policy Center was pointing out that the governor’s “surplus” was fantasy – that state and local governments owed about $1.6 trillion. In those heady days, however, with obliging media cheering him on, Newsom...
There are two big days for a California governor, January 10 when the budget is presented and the May Revise when a few months of additional data and debate have passed. They’re both political documents, allowing governors to play with numbers. Few governors have been as sporting in that enterprise as Gavin Newsom. Last week,...
With the recent Sacramento City Unified strike, the California Policy Center conducted an analysis which compared Sacramento City Unified teacher salaries to nearby Elk Grove Unified. Looking at 2020 data from Transparent California, we found that Sacramento City Unified’s average regular pay for their teachers is between $81,344 and $84,407 which is about $2,000 and...
This article originally appeared on the website California Globe. If you live in California, by now you’ve probably seen the ads, either on prime time television or online, exhorting you to “Power Down 4 to 9PM.” These ads are produced by “Energy Upgrade California,” paid for by “investor-owned energy utility customers under the auspices of...
California’s total state and local government debt now stands at almost $1.6 trillion, or about half the state’s GDP. That isn’t an alarming ratio when compared to the national debt, which has now soared to 128 percent of U.S. GDP with no end in sight. But Californians carry this $1.6 trillion state and local debt ($40,000 per capita)...
As international tensions threaten US and global energy supplies, the California State Senate is considering legislation that would compel public pension funds to divest from fossil fuel companies, potentially starving these firms of capital. The Senate bill is the latest in a series of initiatives designed to replace traditional portfolio management with a set of...
Despite what some politicians in Sacramento might tell you, California is not known for its fiscal sustainability. Last year, the Golden State received an “F” for fiscal health from financial watchdog Truth in Accounting. The group calculated that California has a $264 billion deficit, which translates to $21,100 per taxpayer. The analysis turns the narrative...