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January 26, 2011 - The Governor proposes over $580 million in General Fund budget solutions for state employee compensation and state operations. In this handout we provide an overview of state employment, consider the erosion of anticipated current-year savings, summarize and assess the Governor’s proposals for 2011-12, and discuss alternative options available to the Legislature to increase savings in employee compensation.
January 25, 2011 - The VoteCAL system would serve as the state’s single system for storing and managing the official list of registered voters in California.
January 24, 2011 - The 21st Century Project is an information technology project that would replace existing human resources systems with one statewide integrated human resources management system.
December 22, 2010 - We reviewed the recently ratified labor agreements with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1000, the largest state employee union. The administration estimates that the state's net savings under the proposed agreements will be $383 million ($164 million General Fund) in the current fiscal year—compared with costs negotiated in prior Local 1000 memoranda of understanding (MOUs). The administration’s estimates are generally reasonable, but we (1) discuss concerns we have with the administration’s assumption that leave days will not result in overtime costs or productivity losses, and (2) compare the MOUs’ costs with the previous three-day-per-month furlough program. Finally, we discuss the current status of state employee collective bargaining and major employee compensation policies currently affecting executive branch employees.
December 16, 2010 - Current law requires the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) to report annually to the Legislature certain information related to real estate fraud cases in counties that participate in the Real Estate Fraud Prosecution Trust Fund Program. The report must also include information on the types of expenditures made by the law enforcement agencies of those counties. Our review found that, by 2009-10, 21 counties had reported data indicating their participation in the program at an annual statewide cost of about $10 million, with significant variation in expenditures from county to county. In this report, we further analyze this data and offer recommendations to clarify a 10 percent cap on administrative costs incurred in the program as well as to modify the current program reporting requirements.
November 9, 2010 - In a previous analysis, we pointed out that the sale-leaseback of state buildings authorized in 2009 legislation was poor fiscal policy and represented one imperfect option among many for balancing the state’s budget. Mainly due to changes in the interpretation of property tax assessments, our forecast of the cost of the sale-leaseback is approximately $800 million greater than our previous analysis. The Legislature may wish to consider whether this increase in costs merits changing course.
October 20, 2010 - In this short video, Todd Bland, Director of the Social Services Section at the LAO discusses the report "California's Other Budget Deficit: The Unemployment Insurance Fund Insolvency."
October 20, 2010 -
California's Unemployment Insurance (UI) program became insolvent in 2009, ending that year with a shortfall of $6.2 billion. Absent corrective action, the fund deficit is projected to increase to approximately $20 billion at the end of 2011. This report looks at the history of the UI program, compares California's program to those in other states, examines different scenarios for addressing the insolvency, and makes recommendations to the Legislature for solving this difficult problem.
(Video Summary)
October 6, 2010 - Presented to the Conference Committee on the Budget
September 29, 2010 - Presented to Joint Hearing of Senate and Assembly Committees on Revenue and Taxation
September 28, 2010 - Presented to Joint Hearing of Senate Committee on Elections, Reapportionment, and Constitutional Amendments and Assembly Committee on Elections and Redistricting
July 15, 2010 - In our required fiscal analysis of six proposed collective bargaining agreements, we find that the memoranda of understanding (MOUs), if adopted, would produce state savings in 2010-11, little net budgetary impact in 2011-12, and some increasing state costs for one or more years thereafter. Over the long term (many decades), the MOUs' proposed changes in retirement benefits could produce significant state savings, but no actuarial analysis of these changes has yet been submitted by the administration. The Legislature will face a major decision whether and how to approve the proposed continuous appropriations for economic terms of the six bargaining agreements.
June 23, 2010 - Presented to The Conference Committee on the Budget
May 3, 2010 - Presented to: Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 5 On State Administration Hon. Denise Moreno Ducheny, Chair
April 27, 2010 -
Recent legislation authorized the Department of General Services (DGS) to sell and then lease back 11 state-owned office properties. The sale-leaseback is designed to free up the state’s equity in the buildings to provide one-time revenue for addressing the state’s current budgetary shortfall. We estimate that the sale of buildings would result in one-time revenue to the state of between $600 million and $1.4 billion, but that annual leasing costs would eventually exceed ownership costs by approximately $200 million.
Over the lives of these buildings, we estimate the transaction would cost the state between $600 million and $1.5 billion. The Legislature will need to weigh how these costs compare to other alternatives for addressing the state’s budget shortfall. In our view, taking on long-term obligations—like the lease payments on these buildings—in exchange for one-time revenue to pay for current services is bad budgeting practice as it simply shifts costs to future years. Therefore, we encourage the Legislature to strongly consider other budget alternatives.
(Short video introducing this report)