In California, State Budget Decisions Mean Empty Pockets for Local Election Officials

[Image by Daryl Cagle courtesy of capoliticalreview]

The State of California is once again moving toward a budget deal – and despite improving fortunes elsewhere, it appears that a recent practice regarding state funding of election mandates (basically, not to provide it) is set to continue. The Press-Enterprise’s Jim Miller has more:

From mail ballots to open meetings, state lawmakers often tell city and county officials what to do. And under the state constitution, Sacramento is supposed to pay for some of it.

Over the years, though, hundreds of millions of in local government reimbursement claims have piled up, with no timeline to pay off the debt. Dozens of state mandates, meanwhile, have been suspended to save the state money, forcing local governments to cover the cost of a service or risk a public backlash by dropping it …

Administration officials said the governor’s approach is another example of his principle of “subsidiarity,” the idea that the state should defer to local governments on providing as many services as possible.

“Our feeling is that these are all best practices that local government should be following,” Michael Cohen, the chief deputy director for budgets at Brown’s Department of Finance, told the Legislature’s budget conference committee last week.

Administration officials note that there has been no case of a local government scrapping once-mandated services — such as mail ballots or holding stray animals longer before euthanizing them — just because the state doesn’t require it.

The situation has been a long-running sore point for local government officials. They warn that cash-strapped local governments could be forced to stop providing some services the state won’t reimburse.

The suspensions have featured prominently in the field of elections, and are starting to raise concerns about whether local officials will be able to meet their obligations and voters’ expectations:

In his latest budget, Brown proposes several more mandate suspensions.
Three of those deal with elections — such as verifying the signatures on provisional ballots — and would be in addition to the current freeze on reimbursement claims for vote-by-mail and two other election-related mandates.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office has urged caution. In a memo to the Legislature’s budget writing committee, it warns that the actions could lead to a patchwork of election procedures in different counties.

No county, though, has stopped offering vote-by-mail ballots even though the state no longer required them to. More than half of ballots were cast by mail in many counties last fall.

“The expectation by people is that they can still get a mail ballot,” said Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley, vice-president of the California Association of Clerks and Elected Officials.

Shasta County Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen said counties are owed almost $100 million for election-related mandates, with $85 million of that for vote-by-mail ballots. Some counties, she predicted, will eventually end other former election mandates.

“When the board of supervisors is forced to cut the election department’s budget by half, you look at those things you’re not absolutely required to do by law,” she said.

This issue is particularly significant in California given the amounts of money involved, but it is not unique to the state. As federal funding dwindles, localities are increasingly on the hook for finding money to cover election costs – and rapidly running out of pockets to find it in.