State Spending Reflects Californians’ Priorities

July 24, 2012

Public opinion polling shows that Californians strongly support state spending for education and health and human services, but are less enthusiastic about spending on state prisons, also known as corrections. Solid majorities of the state’s residents, for example, say they are willing to pay higher taxes to support public schools, higher education, and health and human services in order to help close the budget gap, according to a survey conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California in May. In contrast, only about one out of six Californians (17 percent) said they would pay higher taxes to support prisons.

The 2012-13 spending plan signed into law by Governor Brown last month reflects – for the most part – these priorities. More than 50 cents out of every General Fund dollar supports public schools, colleges, and universities, and nearly 30 cents out of every dollar goes to health and human services, including health care and cash assistance for low-income children and seniors. In other words, well over three-quarters of the state budget, roughly 81 cents out of every state dollar, goes to areas that Californians say are their top priorities.

The share of state spending allocated to corrections – just under 10 cents out of every state dollar in 2012-13 – is down compared to 2010-11, but remains higher than many Californians might prefer. Prisons’ share of the state budget, however, is projected to drop further in the coming years, to less than 8 cents out of every state dollar. This decline is due to the recent transfer, or “”realignment,” of responsibility for low-level offenders from the state to the counties, which has begun to shrink the prison population and to move the state toward compliance with a US Supreme Court order to reduce prison overcrowding.

While rarely addressed in public opinion surveys, the remainder of the budget – roughly 9 cents out of every state dollar in 2012-13 – supports veterans services, wildland fire control, environmental protection, and other key public services. This part of the budget also funds the institutions that comprise the state’s system of governance, such as the courts, the Department of Justice, and the Governor’s Office.

Overall, state spending tracks closely with Californians’ priorities and supports the key public structures and services that are necessary for a strong economy and a high quality of life.

– Scott Graves

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New CBP Report Looks at Realignment, Which Has Nothing To Do With Your Car

June 8, 2012

For most Californians, the word “realignment” probably brings to mind something a mechanic does to keep their cars from pulling to one side or the other. In fact, it refers to a major policy shift the Legislature initiated last year: the transfer of several public safety, health, and human services programs – along with a dedicated source of funding – from the state to the counties beginning in 2011-12, as we explain in our new report. The public safety side of realignment has gotten the most media attention, and for good reason. Counties’ new responsibilities for managing, supervising, and rehabilitating “low-level” offenders and parolees will transform the state’s criminal justice system over the next several years as well as bring down state spending on prisons. Nonetheless, a little-known fact about realignment is that nearly two-thirds of the dollars – $3.9 billion out of $5.9 billion in 2012-13 – support health and human services programs, including Child Welfare Services, Foster Care, substance abuse treatment, and mental health services.

While realignment is intended to be permanent, the current framework was adopted with the understanding that the Legislature and voters would need to finalize the details this year. That’s why state lawmakers and Governor Brown are now working on a long-term framework that is likely to be included in the final 2012-13 budget agreement. It’s also why the Governor has proposed a ballot measure for November 2012 that would place key realignment provisions in the state Constitution in order to ensure that counties will receive ongoing funding as well as to provide counties and the state with protections against certain unanticipated costs. These protections, along with the legislation currently under consideration, are central to building a long-term framework for realignment in 2012 and beyond.

– Scott Graves

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Public Schools – Not Corrections – Account for Largest Share of State Budget

January 27, 2012

Quick – what’s the biggest “piece” of California’s state budget pie? Nearly half (47 percent) of Californians think it’s prisons and corrections, according to a new Public Policy Institute of California survey. In fact, the largest share of California’s budget – 41 cents out of every state dollar – goes to public schools under the Governor’s Proposed 2012-13 Budget. In contrast, less than 10 cents out of every state dollar goes to prisons, and that share is likely to drop in coming years due to the recent “realignment” of public safety responsibilities from the state to the counties.

These and other essential facts will be highlighted at the CBP’s upcoming briefing, “Measuring Up: The Social and Economic Context of the Governor’s Proposed 2012-13  Budget,” which will be held on Friday, February 3, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. To reserve your seat, click here. Hope to see you there.

– Scott Graves

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State Corrections Policy: On the Verge of Profound Change

September 15, 2011

A groundbreaking change adopted as part of the 2011-12 budget agreement is about to take effect: Beginning October 1, counties will assume responsibility for “low-level” criminal offenders, which generally refers to individuals who have committed non-violent, non-serious, non-sex crimes. As we describe in a new report that looks at state spending on corrections, this historic “realignment” of responsibility – along with a dedicated source of funding – from the state to the counties is intended to divert, over the next few years, tens of thousands of men and women from the state’s overcrowded prisons.

Transferring low-level offenders to county custody and supervision is partly a response to rising state corrections expenditures and the costly cycling of non-violent felons through state prisons. Our new report shows that state spending on corrections has increased by nearly 1,500 percent over the past generation, more than four times the rate of General Fund spending as a whole. Shifting low-level offenders to county supervision has the potential to substantially reduce state corrections spending, thereby reversing the trend of recent decades, in which a larger and larger share of the state budget has gone toward state prisons and parole. Savings could be reinvested in education, child care, health care, and other public services that help build a strong economy and enhance California’s quality of life.

But the benefits of criminal justice realignment go beyond dollars and cents: Realignment gives counties an opportunity and the incentives to focus on substance abuse treatment, basic skills education, and other rehabilitative services that can improve outcomes for offenders and foster public safety. Female offenders would particularly benefit from such a sea change in corrections policy, since more than half of women currently in prison are classified as low risk, serving time for property or drug crimes, as CBP Executive Director Jean Ross pointed out in a recent op-ed co-authored with Rosenberg Foundation President Timothy Silard. Shifting from a predominantly incarceration-based model toward alternatives, however, will require “a significant paradigm shift,” according to the California State Association of Counties: “The successful model will not be an incarceration model, but one that seeks to divert and rehabilitate citizens,” allowing them to become “productive members of our community.” With implementation hinging on the decisions of local officials in 58 counties, Californians across the state have a clear interest in monitoring how this once-in-a-lifetime policy change rolls out over the next several years.

– Scott Graves

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Californians Pay a High Price for the Death Penalty

July 12, 2011

It’s no secret that California’s lawmakers have cut public services to the bone in response to the massive drop in state revenues precipitated by the Great Recession. The state, for example, has eliminated affordable child care for tens of thousands of children, cut cash assistance for low-income seniors, and slashed funding for the state’s public universities, triggering steep tuition increases that have strained the budgets of students and their families. What’s less well known is that one major area of state spending has emerged relatively unscathed from recent rounds of budget cuts: the state’s prison system, also known as “corrections.” The CBP in the coming months will take a closer look at corrections spending in California, starting today with the high cost of the state’s death penalty.

Capital punishment vaulted into the headlines recently when a Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review article, co-authored by a federal appellate court judge, estimated that California spends well over $150 million per year to administer what the authors characterized as “the most expensive and least effective death penalty law in the nation.” This estimate is in line with that of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (CCFAJ), which estimated in 2008 that California was spending roughly $140 million per year “to maintain our dysfunctional system” of capital punishment.

Despite this sizable annual spending on the death penalty, California has executed only 13 inmates since 1978. The root cause of this “excessive delay,” according to the CCFAJ, is the state’s failure to hire the number of attorneys needed to expeditiously handle the post-trial reviews to which the state’s 714 death row inmates are entitled. The CCFAJ estimated that California would have to spend roughly $80 million more each year just to reduce the gap between sentencing and execution to the national average of 12 years. Rather than spending more in these tough budget times to speed up executions, SB 490 (Hancock) would place on the November 2012 ballot a proposal to eliminate the death penalty as a sentencing option, making life without the possibility of parole the maximum punishment in California.

Given the deep cuts to vital public services that have been made in recent years, it is clearly absurd to spend more than $150 million per year on a capital punishment system that knowledgeable observers agree is broken. As retired Judge Donald A. McCartin, the “hanging judge of Orange County” and a self-described “right-wing Republican,” puts it: “It’s time to stop playing the killing game. Let’s use the hundreds of millions of dollars we’ll save to protect some of those essential services now threatened with death.”

– Scott Graves

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