BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 1253
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Date of Hearing: January 11, 2012
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Cameron Smyth, Chair
AB 1253 (Davis) - As Amended: January 4, 2012
SUBJECT : Counties: recommended budgets.
SUMMARY : Authorizes county boards to revise a recommended
budget, according to specified procedures, prior to adopting a
final version. Specifically, this bill :
1)Authorizes county boards to revise a recommended budget prior
to its final adoption.
2)Requires revisions to a recommended budget made after the
start of the public hearing to be either:
a) Proposed in writing and filed with the clerk of the
board prior to the close of the public hearing, or;
b) Approved by a four-fifths vote of the board after the
close of the hearing.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires the board of supervisors of a county to consider and
approve a recommended budget, on or before June 30 of each
year.
2)Requires the board of supervisors to conduct a public hearing
on the recommended budget, and to adopt a budget on or before
October 2 of each year.
FISCAL EFFECT : None
COMMENTS :
1)This bill is a clean-up measure intended to reinstate a
provision that previously authorized county boards of
supervisors to revise, with certain restrictions, their
recommended budgets before those budgets are formally adopted.
Such a provision was accidentally deleted by the Local
Government Omnibus Act of 2009 �SB 113 (Senate Committee on
Local Government), Chapter 332, Statutes of 2009] in the
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course of updating the budget deadlines contained in the same
code section. This bill would restore those deleted provisions
with slightly revised language to the same effect.
2)Under current law, counties are required to approve a
recommended budget on or before June 30th of each year, and to
adopt a final budget by October 2nd after a public hearing.
According to the author's office, many counties wait until the
October 2nd deadline to approve the final budget "due to
possible fiscal changes that come down from the federal or
state level."
According to the author's office, this bill will "re-establish
the board's ability to make changes to the approved
recommended budget during the period of time prior to adopting
the annual budget. This will allow for the necessary changes
due to economic and programmatic needs of the county, to
insure appropriate spending authority. Without this amendment
the board is prevented from making necessary changes to the
recommended budget until the adopted budget is approved."
It should be noted that, because the deletion was accidental
and therefore largely unknown, it is possible that some
counties may have engaged, without challenge or apparent
negative consequences, in budget revisions during 2010 and
2011 after the explicit revision authority was removed.
However, given that the mistake is now more widely known, it
introduces an unnecessary element of uncertainty to the county
budgetary cycle, therefore making the correction all the more
appropriate.
3)When it was heard by this committee on July 1, 2009, the Local
Government Omnibus Act of 2009 was wholly uncontroversial,
being approved on a 7-0 committee vote and later passing the
Assembly on consent (76-0). This committee's analysis of that
bill noted that it contained fifty-five separate changes to
the County Budget Act, each recommended by a subcommittee of
the Controller's Advisory Committee on County Accounting
Procedures as part of an effort to "reduce the counties' costs
of complying with redundant reporting and filing
requirements".
When the code section affected by this bill was last amended to
revise the deadlines and streamline the language, a
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neighboring subsection containing the explicit authority and
procedures for making revisions to a recommended budget was
omitted. The 2009 committee analysis did reference the
deadline revisions, but it did not specifically mention the
deletion addressed by this bill, which further suggests that
the original deletion was accidental. This bill reinstates
those provisions with slightly revised language, although the
function remains the same.
4)Support arguments: This bill simply re-establishes the
counties' previous statutory authority to revise an approved
recommended budget, an authority that includes explicit
measures promoting procedural transparency. Without this
bill, counties could face unnecessary restrictions and
uncertainty in managing their budgetary affairs.
Opposition arguments: The uncharitable might argue that,
absent a showing that the deleted provisions in question
actually prevented counties from making necessary revisions to
a recommended budget or caused other chaos since their removal
in 2010, the provisions to be reinstated by this bill are
arguably unnecessary.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support Opposition
State Association of County Auditors �SPONSOR]None on file
California State Association of Counties
Analysis Prepared by : Hank Dempsey / L. GOV. / (916) 319-3958