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.
CPC’s Local Fiscal Health Dashboard provides a clear view of 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.
Using public data from Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports (ACFR) that local governments are required to submit each year. The dashboard provides key financial metrics to empower local elected officials, analysts, reporters and citizens to better understand how local governments are performing and spotlight concerning financial trends.
Former California State Senator John Moorlach’s widely recognized financial ranking report card provides detailed rankings on the financial standing of California cities, counties, and school districts. Moorlach’s rankings are 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. Together with the dashboard, these rankings provide an additional lens for understanding and comparing local fiscal health across jurisdictions.
Marc Joffe is President of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association. After a long career in the financial industry, including a senior director role at Moody’s Analytics, he transitioned to policy research at California Policy Center and Reason Foundation. Joffe 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. He is the author of The Municipal Financial Crisis – A Framework for Understanding and Fixing Government Budgeting (Palgrave Macmillan, January 2022).
This year’s California county voter information guides will once again display a serious inequity. Arguments in favor of bond and tax measures will usually be well written and signed by several local luminaries. Arguments against will often be less professionally written, have fewer signers, and may even be completely missing. In San Bernardino County, for…
California lawmakers are once again advancing a familiar and costly mistake — one that risks leaving future generations to pay the price. Assembly Bill 1383, introduced by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, D-Inglewood, would increase pension benefits for public safety employees — allowing earlier retirement with higher payouts — while reducing the contributions those employees are required to make….
On July 2, Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo sent the Los Angeles Unified School District a letter that should alarm every taxpayer and parent in the district. Duardo determined that LAUSD meets the statutory criteria for a “Lack of Going Concern” designation, meaning the nation’s second largest school district may be unable to meet its…
Local elected officials from communities across California have signed a coalition letter opposing AB 1383 (McKinnor). The signatories — from city council members to school board trustees — have direct experience overseeing local budgets and understand the long-term fiscal challenges that rising pension costs can create for cities, counties, school districts, and other local agencies. In…