February 19, 1996 - Analysis of the 1996-97 Budget Bill, Higher Education Chapter
February 25, 2014 - In 2013-14, the Legislature undertook a major restructuring of school finance but retained the state’s Home-to-School Transportation (HTST) program. Recognizing the need for additional reform, the Legislature asked our office to make recommendations for improving the state’s approach to funding school transportation. The state’s existing approach for allocating HTST funding is widely recognized as outdated and irrational. Given the problems with the state’s existing funding approach, we recommend the Legislature replace it with one of three alternatives. In the report, we describe and assess the trade-offs of the following three options: (1) fund transportation services within the new Local Control Funding Formula; (2) create a new, targeted program to help districts that face extraordinarily high transportation costs; and (3) create a broad-based program whereby the state pays a share of each district’s transportation costs. Any of the three options would be a notable improvement over the state’s current approach.
January 18, 2018 - In October 2017, the Pew Charitable Trusts released a report comparing how much each state spends on inmate health care, including medical, mental health, and dental care. Data from this report showed that California had the highest per inmate health care costs among the 49 states that reported data. In this post, we present various findings from this report and reasons for California’s relatively high per inmate health care costs.
February 19, 1996 - Analysis of the 1996-97 Budget Bill, K-12 Education Chapter
March 14, 2024 - This report, prepared at the request of the Legislature, makes recommendations primarily intended to increase transparency of operations and activities at county offices of education.
February 19, 2003 - Analysis of the 2003-04 Budget Bill, Transportation Chapter
February 22, 1995 - Analysis of the 1995-96 Budget Bill, Higher Education Chapter
February 27, 2015 - In this report, we provide an overview of the Governor’s higher education budget. We then review the segments' performance in certain key areas and assess the degree to which the segments require enrollment growth funding, base funding increases, and facilities funding. We find the segments have improved performance in some areas but additional improvement is needed. We find little to warrant additional enrollment growth at UC and CSU, and available data indicate CCC likely will not use all the growth funding provided in 2014-15. We recommend against unallocated budget increases, instead recommending that the Legislature link base increases to a cost-of-living adjustment and any additional increases to specified state priorities. We review several facility proposals and make various related recommendations, including recommending the Legislature establish state facility priorities and require the segments to submit a report describing how they plan to eliminate their maintenance backlogs.