Update (3/13/17): We have updated these posts to include health insurance premium subsidies and cost-sharing reductions to insurers. In this update, we also revised some estimates of refundable tax credits to include more recent and accurate data.
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In this post, we describe the federal funding paid directly and indirectly to California local governments—excluding schools—and how those funds are used.
Local Governments Receive Funds Directly From the Federal Government and Indirectly From the State. As discussed in an earlier post, local governments—counties, cities, and special districts—received over $18 billion in federal funds in 2014-15. (For more information about the federal funding received by schools, see Post 4.) Of that amount, roughly $10 billion was passed on to local governments from the state and the remaining $8 billion was provided directly to local governments directly. Most of the federal funds from the state support county costs for health and human services programs, like Medi-Cal and CalWORKs.
Northern California Counties Receive the Most Funding Per Person. While the state’s most populous counties—like Los Angeles and San Diego—received more federal funding than rural counties, northern counties received more federal funding per person, as shown in Figure 1. Of the $18 billion received by local governments, counties received over half ($10 billion). (San Francisco, which is a city and a county, is included in our discussion of cities below.) The northern counties received more federal funding on a per-person basis in part because these counties have relatively small populations and received larger amounts for national forest related payments and other grants.