The 2025-26 Budget: State Mandates—Regional Water Quality Control Boards

May 30, 2025 - CSM determined that several of the requirements in the permit issued by the regional board in 2010 constitute state-reimbursable mandates for Riverside County and the cities of Riverside County that are within the Santa Ana region (some cities in Riverside County fall within the jurisdiction of the Santa Ana Regional Board and some within the jurisdiction of the San Diego Regional Board).
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5054

The 2019-20 Budget: What Can Be Done to Improve Local Planning for Housing?

Feb 20, 2019 - Ideally, to evaluate these programs ’ effects we would compare the outcomes of eligible cities and counties to similar cities and counties that were not eligible. All cities and counties, however, were potentially eligible for these programs.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3938

An Initial Look at Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Local Government Fiscal Condition

May 12, 2021 - For cities, federal funds ranged from 0. 03 p ercent to 67percent of local revenues. (This small amount on the low end for cities largely is because small cities did not receive any CRF funding directly from the federal government.)
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4428

The 2025-26 Budget: State Mandate—Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board

May 5, 2025 - City of Salinas ) —which found that the city did not have sufficient fee authority to levy a stormwater fee due to the voter approval requirement —was wrongly decided. Senate Bill  231, which took effect in 2018, makes increasing stormwater-related fees more straightforward for local governments because they can use the majority protest provision rather than having to seek voter approval.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5039

The 2023-24 Budget: County of Los Angeles Citizens Redistricting Commission Mandate

May 2, 2023 - Historically, a city council or board of supervisors was responsible for establishing their own new council and supervisor districts, respectively. After the creation of the CRC, some charter cities established independent commissions with the authority to adopt a redistricting plan independent of their city council.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4766

The 2019-20 Budget: California Spending Plan—Housing and Homelessness

Oct 17, 2019 - The budget package creates new incentives for cities and counties to adopt pro-housing policies. Cities and counties that adopt these policies would receive additional points in the scoring of their applications for certain state grant programs.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4102

SB 1 Has Doubled Major Source of State Funding for Local Streets and Roads

Jan 24, 2020 - Cities and counties receive equal splits of the shared revenues. City distributions are based on population, whereas county distributions are determined by the number of registered vehicles and miles of maintained county roads.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4142

The 2017-18 Budget: Local Update of Census Address Program Overview

Mar 23, 2017 - (Properties built without permits may not be contained within the county rolls, however, city and county governments likely would not have these addresses either.) Rather than distributing the funds across all cities and counties, encouraging LUCA participation by county assessors (on behalf o f the county and its cities) could increase the funding available to each county.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3629

Insufficient ERAF: Examining a Recent Issue in Local Government Finance [Publication Details]

Dec 18, 2012 - In addressing claims of insufficient ERAF in future years, the Legislature will be faced with the difficult decisions of how much compensation cities and counties should receive and how the compensation should be provided.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Detail/2676

The 2014-15 Budget: Changes to a Local Infrastructure Financing Tool [Publication Details]

Mar 11, 2014 - Over the last couple decades, cities and counties rarely have used infrastructure financing districts. Instead, they have opted to use alternative methods to fund infrastructure, including using redevelopment agency funds.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Detail/2970