Category: Fiscal & Governance Reform

Video: Implementing California’s School Funding Formula

The success of California’s new funding formula hinges on whether school districts can improve achievement for students, especially those who are high need. New PPIC research focuses on the issues raised so far by implementation of the new formula—a process that will take eight years.

Last week, Laura Hill, PPIC senior fellow and one of the reports’ co-authors, provided an overview of PPIC’s findings in Sacramento. Her presentation was followed by a panel discussion that looked at the challenges and opportunities presented by the new funding formula. Panelists were Carolyn Chu of the Legislative Analyst’s Office; Jonathan Raymond, president of the Stuart Foundation and former superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District; PPIC research associate Paul Warren; and Riverside County school superintendent Kenneth Young. Patrick Murphy, PPIC research director moderated.

The PPIC reports are listed below:

Implementing California’s School Funding Formula: Will High-Need Students Benefit?

Implementing Local Accountability in California’s Schools: The First Year of Planning

Low-Income Students and School Meal Programs in California

Can Preregistering Teens Boost Voter Turnout?

California has been struggling lately with voter engagement. Turnout in the 2014 statewide elections, both in the primary and the general, set record lows. Turnout among young voters was especially bad. A recent report from Mindy Romero of the California Civic Engagement Project showed that an abysmal 8% of 18 to 24 year olds cast a ballot in 2014. As Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc. dryly noted, “In California, an 18- or 19-year-old was more likely to be arrested this year than actually vote in one of the statewide elections.”

In this environment, California has been exploring and adopting all sorts of policy changes to improve turnout. One of these is preregistration: the practice of allowing voters who are not yet old enough to vote to place a flag in the system that will activate their registration as soon as they come of age. California has had preregistration for 17-year-olds since 2009, and for 16-year-olds since last year. However, neither reform will go into effect until the state completes work on a new voter registration database in 2016.

Most of the conversation around this reform has focused on making it easier to get more young people registered by expanding the window of opportunity for doing so. Yet interesting new research suggests there may be more to the reform than meets the eye.

In a recent paper in the prestigious American Journal of Political Science, John Holbein and Sunshine Hillygus of Duke University find that young people who enter the voter rolls through preregistration vote at higher rates than young people who register the traditional way. Depending on how it is measured, the boost in youth turnout is anywhere from a modest 2% to a whopping 13%. While theirs is not the first research to suggest an impact from preregistration (see, for example, this report by Michael McDonald of the University of Florida), Holbein and Hillygus go to great lengths to isolate the causal impact of the reform itself. Thus, we can be pretty confident that the effect they find is real.

This is a very intriguing result. It suggests that there is something about the act of preregistration that makes young people more likely to follow through and cast a ballot. Even more amazing, the boost in turnout measured by Holbein and Hillygus came years after the young people first signed up.

What could be producing this effect? Though the authors can’t say for sure, they speculate that it may have something to do with the way young people participate in the preregistration program. Preregistration often occurs at special school events where there is a certain fanfare around the process. Such fanfare is likely to impact teenagers with extra force, since they are actively shaping their own political identities. In other words, this paper may tell us as much about the potential benefits of civic education in high school as it does about preregistration itself.

More generally, the research also reminds us that total turnout is not a good way of assessing the performance of reforms. California’s turnout has been horrible lately, and any single reform is not likely to alter that basic truth. But if we can identify reforms that improve matters at the margins, then enough of them might add up to a more substantial effect.

A Move to Raise Turnout in LA

Turnout in the most recent Los Angeles City Council election was almost impossibly low: slightly less than 9% of registered voters, or about 150,000, cast ballots. Governance of a city of almost four million was in the hands a group that could squeeze into the Rose Bowl.

And yet this same select club did something on Election Day that all but guaranteed their membership will grow. The days of the “Rose Bowl electorate” are numbered.

LA City Council races fall in the spring of odd-numbered years and don’t coincide with state and federal elections. The City Council races also have voter turnout that is 20 or 30% lower than in state and federal races in neighboring years. The explanation for the difference is not complicated. Visibility and excitement are powerful drivers of turnout. Elections that receive attention across multiple media outlets—such as those for Congress and the presidency—create a buzz that voters find harder to ignore. To expect a similar buzz for stand-alone local races is to require a volume of coverage that those races almost never receive.

What makes the most recent City Council election so unusual is that two extraordinary measures, City Charter Amendments 1 and 2, were also on the ballot. They proposed moving City Council and school district elections to coincide with the federal and state elections that draw more voters to the polls. Even more amazing, the small, dedicated group who voted on these measures passed them by a 3-1 margin, effectively taking a step to end their own privileged position in city and school district politics.

Will this actually increase participation in these local races, or will voters get “ballot fatigue” and opt out when they get to the end of longer ballots? In a 2002 Public Policy Institute of California report, Zoltan Hajnal, Paul Lewis, and Hugh Louch concluded that about half the difference between local and federal turnout can be attributed to election timing. That suggests that the timing change will prompt most voters to weigh in on local elections, even if they are drawn to the polls by higher profile congressional or presidential contests.

The problem of low turnout in LA will not be solved by this policy change. There are clearly other factors driving turnout down, factors that consistently place LA County near the bottom of the turnout list in all elections. But in passing Charter Amendments 1 and 2, voters in LA have taken an important step toward encouraging higher participation in city elections, one that deserves serious consideration by other cities as well.

Californians and Immigration

While the courts, and perhaps Congress, decide the future of President Obama’s actions on immigration, the most recent PPIC Statewide Survey shows how Californians view the issue. Most Californians (69%) supported the president’s executive order protecting as many as 4 million undocumented immigrants from deportation; while 30 percent were opposed. Californians are much more likely to support executive action on immigration than adults nationwide (52% support, 44% oppose).

Across California’s political, regional, and demographic groups, support falls short of a majority only among Republicans (35%). By comparison, most Democrats (83%) and independents (63%) support the president’s actions.

Looking more closely at the January survey findings, we see results consistent with California’s reputation as a blue state. More than 60 percent of Californians across regions and gender, age, education, and income groups support the administrative action on immigration. Considering that Latinos are by far the largest group affected by the executive order, it’s not surprising that nearly all Latinos (89%) support presidential action on immigration; however, 55 percent of whites also voice support.

Support for the president’s action is consistent with favorable opinions on recent reform proposals that have been debated but not enacted by Congress. The Senate passed a plan in 2013 that would have provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants if they met certain requirements. Our September 2014 survey showed that a strong majority—82 percent—including more than 55 percent across parties supported this plan. In fact, more than 65 percent across regional, age, education, income, and racial/ethnic groups were in support.

Beneath Californians’ support of both the president’s executive action and the Senate’s comprehensive immigration plan is a generally favorable view of immigrants. In our January survey, a majority of Californians (63%)—as they have in past surveys dating back to 2000—viewed immigrants as a benefit to California because of their hard work and job skills; 32 percent viewed them as a burden because they use public services. Most Californians across political, regional, and demographic groups view immigrants as a benefit—Republicans (27%) and adults age 55 and older (49%) are the exceptions.

Our survey results help explain why California hasn’t waited for Congress to act on immigration reform. The state has passed a number of laws in the last two years that pave the way for undocumented immigrants to get student loans and financial aid, professional licenses, and, most recently, driver’s licenses. Home to the largest share of immigrants in the nation, California has the most at stake in immigration debate and has consistent views on it.

Drought Watch: Treating Stormwater as a Resource

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

This weekend, the Southland got some much needed rain. This storm helped fill local reservoirs and moisten parched soils—bolstering the region for a fourth year of drought. Unfortunately, too much of this stormwater simply ran straight into local rivers and the ocean, picking up numerous pollutants along the way. Local and state officials want to change this by developing programs that capture and store more stormwater—simultaneously reducing pollution and improving water supplies.

In California, it’s hard to pay for such programs, given our complicated laws on local water finance. To gather ideas about how the state might help, two Senate committees held a joint informational hearing last week. I provided some context on funding issues and opportunities, drawing on PPIC’s recent work on water system finance.

Stormwater is one of California water’s “fiscal orphans.” It faces a critical funding gap—on the order of $500 to $800 million annually—in large part because of constraints introduced by Proposition 218, a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1996. Around this time, stormwater management changed. What was once the routine job of getting storm drainage out of streets as fast as possible became the much more difficult job of preventing the contents of this drainage—an often toxic mix of fuels, fertilizers, pesticides, animal waste, and trash—from harming our waterways and beaches. Proposition 218 introduced strict requirements on how to calculate the costs of these programs, and it also required that local voters—rather than their elected representatives—approve any fee increases. Local governments have been in a bind ever since. They are required by law to manage this pollution, but they face voter resistance to paying for cleanups that mainly affect people living in communities downstream.

The new interest in treating stormwater as a resource—not just a nuisance—is part of a welcome shift toward thinking about California’s water in a more holistic way. For too long, we have been managing different aspects of our water in isolation—with separate programs for water delivery, wastewater treatment, and management of floods and stormwater. If it is done right, capturing stormwater in rain gardens and wetlands can filter out the pollution while storing the water for later use. Recent court rulings and Assembly Bill 2403 (enacted in 2014) helped clarify that the costs of capturing stormwater for water supply can be included in the bills for water delivery. This makes better management easier: increases in water rates require customer oversight but not direct voter approval.

However, more action is needed because some of the costs of stormwater programs relate strictly to managing pollution. The legislature should consider other ways to help local agencies raise the needed funds. One promising direction involves expanding the scope of a 2001 law. This law (AB 810) authorized two Southern California water agencies to apply revenues from the extra charges on water bills for overwatering landscapes—a source of polluted runoff during the dry summer months—to stormwater programs. It’s worked well, and it would be easy to extend this authority to agencies around the state.

Another simple fix would be to let local agencies use their state transportation dollars—funded mainly by the tax on fuels—as matching funds for state grants that support stormwater projects. Under current rules, the state considers these transportation funds to be “state” monies, even though they are generated by local drivers and earmarked for local use. If those rules were changed, local governments that are revamping their streets to make them more bike- and pedestrian-friendly could also create rain gardens that capture, treat, and store stormwater—for a small added cost.

Steps like these are examples of low-hanging fruit that can help California get on a more sustainable path of managing its scarce water resources.

Drought Watch: Getting More Pop per Drop

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

With the state still facing drought conditions, the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee held a hearing yesterday titled “Water: State and Local Funding Relationships and the 2015-16 Governor’s Budget.”

PPIC senior fellow Ellen Hanak testified to the panel about the recent history of the state’s water finance. (Here is her slide presentation.) She noted that California has been relying increasingly on state bonds to finance water projects, using six bonds to raise almost $20 billion between 2000 and 2006, in addition to the $7.5 billion bond that voters passed last November.

She recommended that the state gather more information on water use so that water can be fairly allocated when supplies are low. She also said the state Fish and Wildlife Department is doing a good job managing ecosystems during the drought but that California could benefit from a more strategic plan to do so, as Australia adopted during its recent drought.

Noting that the state needs to find ways to stretch scarce water supplies, Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) said he was going to adopt a line from Ellen’s testimony as the “mantra” for the committee: “greatest pop per drop.”

How California Reduced Its Prison Population

After years of struggling with a 2009 federal court order to reduce the population in the state’s overcrowded prisons, the inmate population has reached the target of 113,700 (based on current capacity), roughly a year ahead of schedule. A look at historic prison and jail data reveals that this milestone has been achieved to a significant extent by adding capacity and simply shifting inmates to institutions not subject to the court order. As a result, cost savings from the various efforts appear lacking so far. The state’s spending on corrections is now at a historic high.

Since reaching its peak in 2006 of about 163,000, the institutional prison population has dropped dramatically, by slightly more than 49,000. The court order mandated that inmate population be reduced to 137.5 percent of design capacity, or the number of inmates the facilities were intended to house.

Realignment, the state’s biggest correction reform, was a response to the court. It shifted incarceration of many lower-level felons and parole violators from state prison to county jails, beginning in 2011. However, a significant share of the prison population—about 18,000 inmates—declined before realignment. Most of this drop happened between 2009 and 2011 and was driven by policy changes such as SB 678, which created financial incentives for counties to lower the number of felony probationers they sent to state prison. Realignment then led to the largest decline, about 28,000, in the state’s institutional prison population. The post-realignment drop occurred in the first year of the reform.

The prison population did not start to decline further until November 2014, when voters passed Proposition 47, which classifies a number of drug and property offenses as misdemeanors instead of felonies. Since then, the institutional prison population has dropped an additional 3,000, which pushed the number of inmates below 137.5 percent of design capacity.

The state has met the crucial federally mandated target, but not—as reform proponents hoped—by a major reduction in costly prison incarceration. Here’s a rough breakdown of how this was achieved.

First, the decline of about 18,000 inmates in the institutional population prior to realignment was partly accomplished by housing about 9,000 offenders in private prison facilities out of state—a practice that continues on about the same order of magnitude. Second, since the implementation of realignment, the state has also incarcerated an additional 3,900 inmates in public and private facilities in the state. California has also opened up a new state prison health care facility in Stockton with a capacity of almost 3,000 inmates. Third, since realignment shifted responsibilities of many lower-level felons and parole violator to the counties, the county jail population has increased by about 11,500, as of June 2014 (the numbers may have come down some since then because of Proposition 47). In sum, roughly one half of the reduction of the institutional prison population since its 2006 peak was achieved by increasing capacity and simply shifting inmates to other facilities.

California has indeed seen a significant decrease in the reliance on incarceration over the last decade through policies like SB 678 and realignment, as well as initiatives like 2012 Proposition 36 (which revised California’s “Three Strikes” law) and Proposition 47. Our total incarceration rate has dropped from about 702 per 100,000 residents in 2006 to about 568. Unfortunately this is not reflected in the state’s expenditures. In fact, spending on corrections is now at a historic high. A look at corrections spending going back to the 1970s shows a long-term increase. In the current budget year, the state is spending more than $12 billion on corrections. In other words, meeting the federally mandated target does not mean that California has solved its incarceration problem.

Research shows that incarceration at current levels is not a cost-effective way to prevent crime. Clearly we need to refine our crime prevention strategy and look more closely for effective alternative approaches to manage public safety.

Commentary: Set Water Priorities to Prepare for Drought

This commentary was published today by the San Francisco Chronicle.

There are still two months left in the rainy season, but all indications are that California’s drought is extending into a fourth year — even with the soaking Northern California is expecting this weekend.

Already, state officials are making tough choices about priorities for water use. Nowhere is this more difficult than managing water for the environment . . .

(Continue reading on sfchronicle.com.)

Video: January PPIC Statewide Survey Briefing

State residents are feeling more optimistic than they have in years—about California’s elected leaders, the direction of the state, and their own economic futures. Dean Bonner, associate survey director, presented these and other key findings at a briefing last week in Sacramento. In addition to asking about government and fiscal issues, the January survey gauged opinions on four important issues being debated at the state and federal level. Among the findings:

  • Crime, police, and race relations. A solid majority of Californians say the police are doing either an excellent job or good job controlling crime in their communities. But blacks are much less likely than others to hold this view.

  • Water and drought. A majority of Californians say the supply of water is a big problem in their region, and most say the state and local governments are not doing enough to respond to the current drought.

  • Health care reform. A record-high 51 percent of Californians have a generally favorable view of the 2010 health care reform law, while 41 percent have an unfavorable view.

  • Immigration reform. A solid majority of residents support President Obama’s executive action to shield as many as 4 million immigrants from deportation, while about a third are opposed.

The Debate Over Extending Proposition 30

One of the most controversial issues that the governor and legislature face in 2015 is what to do about the Proposition 30 tax increase. This citizens’ initiative passed with a 55% yes vote in November 2012. The governor says this tax increase is meant to be temporary. But others say that the state budget situation has improved because of Proposition 30, and it could deteriorate if we allow the sales and income tax increases to fully expire in 2018. In the most recent PPIC Statewide Survey, 52% of likely voters would favor a Proposition 30 tax extension. We found identical results in our December 2014 poll. A slim majority of support suggests that a tax extension is in the realm of the possible but far from a sure thing.

Why the sense of urgency? Tax proponents say that the November 2016 presidential election offers the last chance for a high turnout among voters who are likely to support a Proposition 30 tax extension before its sunset in 2018. Our most recent poll confirms this view. Support for the tax extension falls short among the likely voter groups with the highest propensity to vote: Republicans (30%), whites (49%), homeowners (48%), age 55 and older (50%), and those with annual incomes of $80,000 or more (45%). Support is highest among these lower-propensity likely voter groups: Democrats (69%), Latinos (68%), those under age 35 (61%), renters (61%), and those with annual incomes under $40,000 (59%). As these numbers suggest, it would be a riskier proposition to wait until the 2018 gubernatorial election for a tax extension vote.

Many observers think that the voters will take their cues from Governor Brown if they are asked to weigh in on this issue. After all, it was the governor who brought this tax measure to the voters when the legislature failed to act. In our latest poll, most likely voters—58%— approve of the governor’s job performance, and most who approve of Brown also favor a tax extension (69%). Also, those who prefer Governor Brown’s approach to the state budget over their Democratic and Republican legislators overwhelmingly favor a tax extension (75%). In sum, Brown’s position on the tax extension will matter. But no one is certain whether he will actively support or openly oppose a tax extension in 2016.

Some are looking to tweak the current Proposition 30 tax increase to gain more favor with the voters. There are calls, for example, for the creation of another temporary tax increase instead of making the Proposition 30 increases permanent. That may help gain voter support, but we have no PPIC polling data suggesting that voters supported Proposition 30 because it was temporary. Others argue that the tax on earnings over $250,000 should continue while the one quarter cent sales tax is allowed to expire. This might well improve the chances of passage and is consistent with our past polls, which show majority support for raising taxes on wealthy Californians and majority opposition to a state sales tax increase.

What is missing from this political calculus? A selling point of the Proposition 30 tax increase was its beneficiary: K-12 education. In our past polling, Californians have ranked K-12 education as their highest spending priority. However, relatively few (correctly) perceive that K-12 education is now the largest area of state spending.

Our recent poll shows that the knowledge gap is wide when it comes to the state budget: 57% of likely voters say that K-12 education is their highest priority for state spending, but just 19% are able to cite K-12 education as the largest area for state spending today. Among the likely voters whose top spending priority is K-12 education, 54% are in favor of a tax extension. Among those who think the state’s top spending category is something other than K-12 education, 56% are in favor of a tax extension. But among those who accurately say that K-12 education is the state’s top spending area, just 35% favor extending Proposition 30.

Our survey also asked what is the one issue facing California today that is most important for the governor and legislature to work on this year. Among the likely voters who named K-12 education, 65% are in favor of a Proposition 30 tax extension. In sum, the fate of a Proposition 30 tax extension in 2016, as was the case for Proposition 30 in 2012, will likely depend on how the voters perceive its effects on K-12 education.

The November 2016 presidential election offers the best chance to include the most voters in this contentious issue. And, as our recent poll shows, Californians want a role in fiscal decisionmaking. An overwhelming 76% of likely voters say they prefer that voters make some of the decisions about spending and taxes at the ballot box, while just 21% say that they want the governor and legislature to make all of these decisions. Why not give the voters a chance to hear the pros and cons in a debate that can also help increase knowledge about the budget and give them the role they want to determine California’s future?