Center for Public Accountability
The Center for Public Accountability promotes fiscal transparency and sustainability by providing financial data and analysis of California’s cities, counties and school districts, and offers a roadmap to sound governance for California’s local elected officials.
Tracks the financial health of California cities, counties and school districts. The interactive database allows users to track how elected officials are managing local budgets, support ongoing budget decision making and identify financial red flags. CPC’s dashboard uses public data from Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports (ACFR) that local governments are required to submit every year to get access to federal funds. The dashboard provides key financial metrics to allow local elected officials, analysts, reporters and citizens to understand how cities are performing overall and in comparison to other cities, and spotlight concerning financial trends.
Former California State Senator John Moorlach’s financial ranking report card provides rankings on how residents of across California are impacted by the financial standing of their cities, counties, and school districts. This is derived by dividing a city’s unrestricted net position — which reflects the available resources that the city can use for general purposes, such as public services, operations, and includes assets and liabilities — by their population. In addition, Moorlach also provides rankings on all 50 states.
Marc Joffe is President of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association and a California Policy Center visiting fellow.
After a long career in the financial industry, including a senior director role at Moody’s Analytics, he transitioned to policy research at CPC and Reason Foundation. Joffe’s research focuses on government finance and state policy issues.
Marc earned an MBA from New York University and an MPA from San Francisco State University.
Mark Moses has thirty years of experience in local government administration and finance. His recent book, The Municipal Financial Crisis – A Framework for Understanding and Fixing Government Budgeting (Palgrave Macmillan, January 2022).
The taxpayers are always the ‘deep pockets’ that public leaders depend on. There is nothing more infuriating to me than adult predators who exploit and sexually abuse children. As a former president of the board of a summer camp, I know that it had to pay high premiums for liability insurance. Not for the mud…
California is the prime battleground between transportation innovation and legacy mass transit. While Silicon Valley is rolling out driverless taxis and testing flying cars, urbanists and transit unions are seeking more taxpayer funding to buttress money-losing train and bus systems around the state. If history is any guide, the new transportation technologies will ultimately replace…
Elected Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia has issued a dire warning about the city’s finances. It’s not the first time he’s been direct in the two years since he has assumed the office. He is no stranger to addressing transparency concerns, especially on the hot topic of auditing homelessness expenditures. And he’s unafraid to…
California’s major cities, especially the seat of its major counties, are falling apart at the seams. The city and county of San Francisco announced that its newly elected mayor is facing an $840 million budget deficit over the next two years. San Diego’s Mayor is stressing over a $250 million budget deficit. And the controller…