The purpose of the new rules was briefly outlined last week by the accounting board chairman, David Vaudt . . . “Previously, what happened under current standards is that the pension and OPEB liabilities appeared in the footnotes of the financial statement, and regretfully that didn’t get the attention of the policymakers, the mayors and councils, the governors and the legislators,” Vaudt said.
People who work for cities, counties, school districts and other public agencies in the four-county Sacramento region face an average HMO premium increase next year of 12.2 percent. Amounts vary by health plan from a low of 5.17 percent for Kaiser Permanente to 18.76 percent for the Blue Shield NetValue plan. Anthem Blue Cross charges more here than in any other region, including the Bay Area.
The budget’s enactment comes a week before the July 1 start of the next fiscal year. But Brown and the Democratic-controlled Legislature still have significant work to do outside the budget process. Brown called a special session last week to address funding shortfalls in health care, roads and infrastructure.
The answer lies largely in the rapid expansion of the Medi-Cal program, which will soon provide health care to nearly 1 in 3 Californians. At the same time, the federal government has disallowed a creative financing scheme the state was using to maximize federal money for the program.
“That stunning number is stark evidence of California’s ever-widening economic divide.
California has nearly twice as many enrollees as the next largest state, New York, and 17.2 percent of all Medicaid enrollment in the nation.”
In announcing the agreement, Brown said the deal preserves his General Fund revenue forecast and overall spending levels, a major concession by legislative leaders to the fourth-term governor. Total general fund spending of $115.4 billion was only $61 million more than Brown originally proposed, not the $749 million more legislative Democrats wanted.
Education reform groups worried aloud that without strong direction from Sacramento, unions, particularly the California Teachers Association, would exert their influence on local school boards to claim much of the new money for salary increases.
In this report, the Volcker Alliance examines in detail the budgeting practices of California, New Jersey and Virginia, assessing the effectiveness of each state’s practices. The report highlights the need for effective and transparent budgeting practices by “shining a spotlight on opaque and confusing practices and by identifying more appropriate approaches” when creating state budgets and fiscal policy.
There was, however, a curious omission from the “wall of debt” three years ago – $10 billion in loans from the federal government to prop up the state’s Unemployment Insurance Fund that, like the budget as a whole, was battered by the Great Recession.
But the question is whether California has done enough to guard against another budget crisis, and experts say that the answer is a resounding no.
Citing growing spending and reduced revenues, bond-rating agency Moody’s has downgraded Richmond’s issuer rating, meaning the city may have to pay higher interest rates if it wants to borrow money in the future.
But this time the proposal by pension-change advocates Chuck Reed and Carl DeMaio has a new twist: Pensions and other retirement benefits themselves would automatically become a matter of ballot-box politics by requiring voter approval any time government officials sought to upgrade benefits.
States and state-equivalents spending the most per pupil in 2013 were New York ($19,818), Alaska ($18,175), the District of Columbia ($17,953), New Jersey ($17,572) and Connecticut ($16,631). States spending the least per pupil included Utah ($6,555), Idaho ($6,791), Arizona ($7,208), Oklahoma ($7,672) and Mississippi ($8,130).
The $15 million state tax credit would be in return for Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) creating about 4,500 jobs across its facilities in Fremont, Hawthorne, Lathrop and Newark, said Brook Taylor, a deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. The agency administers the California Competes program.
Monday’s “Truth and Integrity in State Budgeting” study from The Volcker Alliance examined budget practices in California, Virginia and New Jersey. The findings could be summed up as: Virginia sets the standard, New Jersey is a mess, and California’s budget transparency has gotten better since the approval of majority-vote budgets, temporary tax increases, and a stronger rainy-day reserve.