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 misguided quest for efficient government As the wildfires raged in southern California last month, we witnessed bipartisan support for the reintroduction of The Fix our Forests Act, ostensibly designed to reform forest management. At the same time, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power announced that it will submit to outside investigations to…
Conservatives often wonder why California’s 13.3 percent top marginal income tax rate has not driven out more of its affluent residents. Indeed, a family earning $10 million annually stands to save over $1 million each year by moving to Texas, Florida, or another state that does not levy an income tax. But many high earners…
Pushing back against the winds of change in Washington, DC, California Governor Newsom reiterated his commitment to the state’s high-speed rail (HSR) boondoggle while tacitly lending support to a new effort to incinerate taxpayer funds: a 54-mile high-speed connector line that would join HSR with Brightline West service planned for the I-15 corridor. Newsom participated…
After a period of municipal financial stability, California local governments are once again facing fiscal distress. A robust system of municipal financial reporting and monitoring can provide early warnings of fiscal trouble and allow policymakers at the state and local level to proactively address them. Join California Policy Center and XBRL US for a half-day conference, Modernizing Municipal Reporting, featuring keynote speaker California…
