As a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Financial Planner, John Moorlach began his career in public service 20 years ago when he warned that then Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert Citron’s risky investment strategies would lead to bankruptcy. Moorlach’s warnings proved true when Orange County filed for bankruptcy protection in December 1994, then the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. He was appointed the county Treasurer-Tax Collector in 1995 and was twice re-elected. In 2006, voters elected John to serve in his first of two terms on the Board of Supervisors, where he continued his focus on reforming the county’s budget practices and sounding the alarm on the county’s growing unfunded liabilities. He served from 2015 to 2020 as the State senator for the 37th Senate district. He is now a senior fellow and director of CPC’s Center for Public Accountability.
In their book, “Bridgebuilders: How Government Can Transcend Boundaries to Solve Big Problems,” William Eggers and Donald Kettl make a simple observation: “Accountability and trust go hand in hand.” What if a government doesn’t provide transparency that allows for accountability? It makes building trust very difficult. What happens when a government is so shell-shocked from...
There are several metrics that can be used to effectively rank the fiscal status of our nation’s 50 states. The top resource for years, when one searched for this information, was the Mercatus School at George Mason University. US News & World Report has and continues to provide an annual ranking of the states. The...
California’s fiscal accountability dashboard for cities, which was implemented in 2019 and identified local governments with financial problems, was taken down last month. Why? First, some background. The County of Orange in Southern California incurred an infamous fiscal calamity in the closing month of 1994 that resulted in nearly $1.7 billion in investment losses. It...
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,...
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