Start with $1,815.

Via a budget trailer bill signed into law last month, California has budgeted $5 million to establish a “Council on Health Care Delivery Systems” charged with developing a plan “for advancing progress toward achieving a health care delivery system that provides coverage and access through a unified financing system for all Californians.” Made up of five members, three chosen by the governor, one by the Senate Rules Committee, and one by the Speaker of the Assembly, the Council will start meeting in 2019 and must submit a plan to the legislature and governor on or before October 1, 2021.

But scalable only with action by state legislature.

EdSource reports that heavy investment in teacher preparation doubled math scores in a low-income, mostly African-American and Latino San Francisco school.

The Democratic Caucus in the California State Assembly has published a video praising the 2018–19 state budget and in particular the $16 billion in reserves the state now has set aside in preparation for the next downturn in state revenues. That praise is well deserved.

OPEB (“Other Post Employment Benefits”) debt largely consists of subsidies to retired employees for medical insurance premiums. OPEB debt owed by the state doubled in the last decade to more than $90 billion and state spending in the 2018–19 California state budget on OPEB will be >80 percent higher than a decade ago. The burden of that spending disproportionately falls on discretionary General Fund programs, as explained here.

Yesterday my political party (Democratic) incorrectly tweeted that California was “paying down debt.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Enabling a cancer to grow.

Sometimes political philanthropy produces bad outcomes. One example is the latest parcel tax increase for San Francisco Unified School District, the campaign for which was financed by political philanthropists and approved by voters June 5. Using a loophole to lower the threshold for voter approval and sold falsely as a sustainable solution to inadequate teacher salaries, the regressive tax covers up a growing financial cancer, reduces pressure to address that cancer, and burdens SF’s shrinking middle class.

One giant leap for the next generation.

Earlier this year the City of Palo Alto’s Finance Committee hired an independent actuary to produce a budget scenario reflecting a more realistic return on pension assets than the unrealistically-high return assumed by CalPERS, the city’s pension fund manager. As explained here, unrealistically-high assumed rates of return allow governments to artificially suppress upfront (“Normal”) pension costs for current services at the expense of larger costs for citizens down the road who didn’t receive the benefit of those services. The independent actuary reported that a realistic assessment of Palo Alto’s Normal Cost is $8 million higher than CalPERS’s assessment.

Where is the outrage?

Spending on California schools is nearing $100 billion per year, more than $16,000 per student. School revenues have never been higher. Yet some school districts are making cuts. Imagine you are the parent of a child in the Oakland Unified School District, which serves nearly 50,000 children.

As much as we wish it otherwise, two recent bills illustrate how far our state legislature still has to travel to be fully liberated from special interests.

With passage of the new state budget by the legislature last night, per pupil spending in California will exceed $16,000 in the next fiscal year…

Most political reporters know that the California Legislature is a co-equal branch of government but few know much about the legislators themselves. As a result, all too often they place legislators in traditional categories — eg, “pro-business, “pro-labor,” “pro-environment” — when California’s political world has moved well past those old and uninformative designations.

Most everyone knows the names of the two people vying to be California’s next governor. Hardly anyone knows the names of the two people who more than anyone else will affect the success or failure of the next governor.

Governor Jerry Brown is negotiating yet another salary increase for state prison employees, the fourth in seven years.

Well-informed Californians can get a glimpse of poorly-informed journalism about their state legislature with a peek at an article by Washington Post reporter Dan Balz, who writes that Top Two Primary’s ”promises remain mostly unfulfilled” and that “even in Sacramento, the differences are minimal.” Oh, really?

Govern For California’s Primary Election Slate consists of 21 people who meet five tests: intelligence, financial literacy, legislative temperament, ability to win, and courage, by which we mean they toil for something greater than themselves.

California’s unemployment rate exceeds the national rate…

On May 11 California Governor Jerry Brown released the May Revision to his proposed budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to understand California’s budgets.

Lunch isn’t free.

California’s General Fund operates like a waterfall. Programs protected by constitution (principally K-12, community colleges, and debt service on General Obligation Bonds), statute (principally Medi-Cal, the state single-payer health insurer for low-income Californians) and contract (principally pensions and subsidies for retired employee health insurance) get first dibs on tax revenues. Only after those programs are satisfied do funds become available for unprotected programs such as UC, CSU and courts.

The California legislature is a co-equal branch of government. Governors are not CEO’s but rather more like committee chairs with veto power. They cannot enact legislation without the consent of at least 62 members of the state legislature. To get to those members they must go through two people: the Speaker of the Assembly and the President Pro Tem of the State Senate. Despite their power, few Californians even know their names*.