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).
The Town of Apple Valley’s mission promises “a better way of life through local control of public safety, development, services and amenities.” This leaves unanswered what the town should leave to someone else. That omission can become expensive for the residents, even in the absence of corruption or spectacular incompetence. In three decades in municipal...
By Mark Moses
AI—The Gamechanger For decades, cities and counties operated on an understanding rarely discussed: municipal codes would never be fully enforced. I watched city councils adopt multi-family rental smoking bans and plastic utensil bans in response to zero public outcry, while staff confirmed there was no compelling local justification for the ordinance and no capacity to...
By Mark Moses
CalSTRS earned 13.9% on investments for the year ended June 30, 2026, up from 8.5%, and called it a significant step toward full funding. The National Association of State Retirement Administrators said this is “a marathon, not a sprint.”[1] Thirty years in local government finance taught me to distrust a figure that measures the wrong...
By Mark Moses
California Teachers Can Now Veto AI The Union Gets the Final Say California’s largest school districts have done something unheard of in American management: they have given a labor union veto power over whether a promising technology may ever be used to reorganize work. On January 22, 2026, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD)...
By Mark Moses
In June 2026, Monterey Park became the first city in America to permanently ban new data centers. Residents didn’t just pack city council meetings for months—86 percent voted to forbid a building that would never enroll children in local schools, clog rush-hour traffic, or ask the city to build another park, library, or recreation program....
By Mark Moses
This spring, Marin County launched a second round of participatory budgeting, inviting residents to help decide how another $2.5 million in public funds should be spent. The program reflects California’s growing embrace of participatory budgeting as an innovative reform. The idea clearly resonates with many people. More participation should produce better government. It won’t. A...
By Mark Moses
California cities continue to struggle with recurring fiscal stress. Los Angeles recently closed a budget gap approaching $1 billion. San Jose addressed a shortfall of roughly $50 million while acknowledging that structural challenges remain. Oakland reopened its two-year budget to address a gap of roughly $265 million while continuing to wrestle with insolvency concerns. Across...
By Mark Moses
We are witnessing a troubling migration—a flight of capital and talent from states that have adopted increasingly aggressive tax policies. Elon Musk moved Tesla and X from California to Texas; Palantir relocated to Colorado. High-profile individuals and corporations are pulling up stakes and relocating to states with more favorable tax policies. A casual observer might...
By Mark Moses
In the years since the National Civic League published “Is It None of Our Business?,” the trend of city halls tackling national issues has shifted from a novelty to a standard operating model. The League’s 2023 analysis argued that local agencies should embrace a broader national agenda—a shift they championed as a positive phenomenon. However, from...
By Mark Moses
If you listen to the buzz in progressive state capitols and city halls across the country, or read Ezra Klein’s Abundance, you’d think our biggest problem is a crisis of state capacity. Klein, and a growing number of progressives, share a vision of a liberalism that builds. They argue that the government has become proficient...
By Mark Moses
The headlines are, by now, a wearying routine. In 2025, a federal takedown revealed $14.6 billion in Medicare fraud, involving kickbacks for allegedly unnecessary tests. In Minnesota, the Feeding our Future scandal saw $300 million vanish from a pandemic meal program, while childcare fraud drained another $100 million via ghost students. California, meanwhile, became the...
By Mark Moses
The municipal financial crisis is more urgent than ever. It has been four years since my book, The Municipal Financial Crisis, was published by Palgrave Macmillan. I wrote the book to bring to light the root causes of why our local governments are failing to manage administratively, operationally, and financially. Looking back today, I find...
By Mark Moses
When Permission Replaces Property Rights, the California Dream Becomes a Dream Deferred For over a century, California stood as a frontier of first resort for the ambitious, attracting those eager to escape old-world constraints in exchange for a promise of radical autonomy. This California Dream was not a byproduct of luck; it was forged by...
By Mark Moses
For years, cities have implemented various metrics and scoring systems to assess their fiscal condition. The Government Finance Officers Association provides a “Fiscal First Aid” program complete with a multi-step process for assessing fiscal health. Yet such efforts have not improved cities’ ability to manage their finances. A recent report by the National League of...
By Mark Moses
a new form will got here