Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

A First Look at Fresno State’s Quarterback Battle

2 days ago

Israeli Columnist Alleges Ethnic Cleansing Plan in Gaza

2 days ago

Tesla to Roll out Bay Area Robotaxis With Safety Drivers, Report Says

2 days ago

Thailand and Cambodia Exchange Heavy Artillery Fire as Border Battle Expands

2 days ago

California Cannot Require Background Checks to Buy Ammunition, US Appeals Court Rules

3 days ago

TikTok Will Go Dark in US Without Chinese Approval of Sale Deal, Lutnick Says

3 days ago

Fresno County Authorities Still Searching for Missing Mother and Infant

3 days ago
Walters: Promises Made, but Not Kept
dan_walters
By Dan Walters, CalMatters Commentary
Published 6 years ago on
January 5, 2020

Share

Last month, McClatchy Newspapers and the ProPublica news organization published an investigative article delving into how billions of dollars meant to reduce repeat criminal activity by improving local jails and probation services were siphoned off for other purposes.


Dan Walters
Opinion
“Since 2011, California has sent more than $8 billion to counties to cover the costs of the massive prison overhaul approved that year, known as ‘realignment,’ which diverted thousands of inmates from prisons to local jails,” the article, published in the Sacramento Bee and other McClatchy newspapers, revealed.
The money was meant to pay for jailing the diverted felons and for programs to help them avoid lives of crime. However, as the article points out, county officials instead shifted much of the money into ordinary law enforcement activities, especially sheriff’s offices.
Why? Law enforcement costs were outstripping local revenues largely for the unspoken reason that the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) was pressuring local governments to contribute more money to offset the system’s investment losses during the Great Recession, and to pay for pension benefit increases. Pension contributions for law enforcement officers are especially high, about 50 cents for every dollar of salary, because they receive the most generous benefits.

Failure to Follow Through on Transformative Policy Decrees

Regardless of the underlying reasons for the financial moves reported by McClatchy and the nonprofit ProPublica, they are another example of a long-standing, corrosive trend in California government.
Governors and legislators routinely make what they describe as transformative policy decrees and then either neglect to follow through or fail to monitor how the money meant to implement the policy is being spent.
What’s happened with realignment money is eerily similar to what happened to another sweeping policy also championed by former Gov. Jerry Brown: an overhaul of school finance called the Local Control Funding Formula.
It removed restrictions on some state school aid and gave school districts with large numbers of underperforming poor and English-learner students extra funds to close a stubborn “achievement gap.”
As with realignment, Brown and other state officials failed — refused, actually — to monitor how the extra school money was being spent. However, outside studies have shown that much of it has been diverted to general purposes, including demands on school districts to pump more funds into CalPERS and the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) to save them from insolvency.

Mentally Ill Left Wandering the Streets

A few days after the McClatchy-ProPublica article appeared, CalMatters published another article about the enact-and-forget syndrome, this one involving a crisis in mental health treatment that contributes mightily to the state’s horrendous homelessness problem.
“In 1967, a law passed that transformed the treatment of people with mental illness in California,” the article noted. Much like realignment decades later, it was meant to depopulate the state’s mental hospitals, curb involuntary commitments and divert the mentally ill into local treatment programs.
However, the promises of the 1967 Lanterman-Petris-Short act to create a network of easily accessible local mental health services were never kept. The money that had been saved from closing mental hospitals was swallowed up in state budgets approved by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and his successors from both parties.
Thus, the mentally ill were left wandering the streets, often winding up in local jails and state prisons when they committed crimes and contributing to the penal crisis that realignment was supposed to address a half-century later.
We should keep the 1967 mental health law, the Local Control Funding Formula and realignment in mind the next time the state’s politicians tell us they are enacting a transformative solution to a pressing problem.
CalMatters is a public-interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.
[activecampaign form=31]

DON'T MISS

What Are Fresno Real Estate Experts Predicting for 2025 and Beyond?

DON'T MISS

First California EV Mandates Hit Automakers This Year. Most Are Not Even Close

DON'T MISS

Visalia Police Arrest Wanted Man Following DUI Traffic Stop and Chase

DON'T MISS

Trump, EU’s Von Der Leyen to Meet on Sunday to Clinch Trade Deal

DON'T MISS

Israel Announces Daily Pauses in Gaza Fighting as Aid Airdrops Begin

DON'T MISS

California School Board Resigns After Audit Reveals $180M in Improper Funding

DON'T MISS

NASA Says 20% of Workforce to Depart Space Agency

DON'T MISS

Frustration, Gaza Alarm Drove Macron to Go It Alone on Palestine Recognition

DON'T MISS

Trump Golfs in Scotland as Epstein Questions Persist

DON'T MISS

Visalia Police Arrest Armed Robbery Suspect at Long John Silver’s

DON'T MISS

Grand Rising Brings Sober Day Party Vibes to Fresno

DON'T MISS

Jack McAuliffe, Who Started a Craft Beer Revolution, Dies at 80

UP NEXT

Israeli Columnist Alleges Ethnic Cleansing Plan in Gaza

UP NEXT

No One Controls MAGA, not Even Trump. The Epstein Files Prove It

UP NEXT

A Pro-Trump Community Reckons With Losing a Beloved Immigrant Neighbor

UP NEXT

Why American Jews No Longer Understand One Another

UP NEXT

Masked Raids and Impersonators Driving Force Behind Terror Campaign Across Nation

UP NEXT

I’m Not Leaving Measure C and COG Can’t Make Me: Brooke Ashjian

UP NEXT

I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.

UP NEXT

California Is Finally Adopting Phonics, Fulfilling a Grandmother’s Dream

UP NEXT

New CA Budget Papers Over $20 Billion Deficit, Ignores Day of Reckoning

UP NEXT

Trump Is Winning the Race to the Bottom

California School Board Resigns After Audit Reveals $180M in Improper Funding

1 day ago

NASA Says 20% of Workforce to Depart Space Agency

1 day ago

Frustration, Gaza Alarm Drove Macron to Go It Alone on Palestine Recognition

1 day ago

Trump Golfs in Scotland as Epstein Questions Persist

1 day ago

Visalia Police Arrest Armed Robbery Suspect at Long John Silver’s

1 day ago

Grand Rising Brings Sober Day Party Vibes to Fresno

1 day ago

Jack McAuliffe, Who Started a Craft Beer Revolution, Dies at 80

1 day ago

Fresno Crash Leaves One Dead After Car Submerges in Canal

1 day ago

Lemoore Farmers Fed Up With Lack of Representation on Groundwater Agency

1 day ago

‘Jenny from the Block’ Rescued After Camping Out by Calwa ATM

1 day ago

Visalia Police Arrest Wanted Man Following DUI Traffic Stop and Chase

A 20-year-old man was arrested early Saturday morning after leading officers on a pursuit into Tulare County, authorities said. Just after 1...

5 hours ago

Visalia police arrested a 20-year-old man with multiple felony warrants early Saturday after he fled a DUI traffic stop, leading officers on a pursuit into Tulare County that ended with spike strips and a CHP PIT maneuver. (Visalia PD)
5 hours ago

Visalia Police Arrest Wanted Man Following DUI Traffic Stop and Chase

President Donald Trump attends a bilateral meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during the 50th World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 21, 2020. (Reuters File)
5 hours ago

Trump, EU’s Von Der Leyen to Meet on Sunday to Clinch Trade Deal

Palestinians carry aid supplies that entered Gaza through Israel, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, July 27, 2025. (Reuters/Dawoud Abu Alkas)
5 hours ago

Israel Announces Daily Pauses in Gaza Fighting as Aid Airdrops Begin

The entire board of Highlands Community Charter in Sacramento stepped down after a state audit found the school improperly received over $180 million and engaged in questionable spending. (Shutter
1 day ago

California School Board Resigns After Audit Reveals $180M in Improper Funding

The NASA logo is seen at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., April 16, 2021. (Reuters File)
1 day ago

NASA Says 20% of Workforce to Depart Space Agency

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and French President Emmanuel Macron visit a ward for Palestinian patients at El Arish Hospital, close to the border with the Gaza Strip, in Arish, Egypt April 8, 2025. Ludovic Marin/Pool via REUTERS
1 day ago

Frustration, Gaza Alarm Drove Macron to Go It Alone on Palestine Recognition

U.S. President Donald Trump golfs at Trump Turnberry resort in Turnberry, Scotland, Britain, July 26, 2025. (Reuters/Phil Noble)
1 day ago

Trump Golfs in Scotland as Epstein Questions Persist

Noah Robinson, 38, was arrested after allegedly robbing a Visalia Long John Silver’s at knifepoint and attempting to flee through nearby backyards with $110 in stolen cash on Friday, July 25, 2025. (Visalia PD)
1 day ago

Visalia Police Arrest Armed Robbery Suspect at Long John Silver’s

Help continue the work that gets you the news that matters most.

Search

Send this to a friend