The current recession has taken a hard toll on California local governments. With declining revenues and increasing costs of providing services, many local governments are struggling to balance their budgets. This paper, based on a survey of California county governments in the summer of 2009, intends to investigate what factors have caused their budget shortfalls and what strategies they have adopted to cope with the fiscal crisis. Survey findings show there are three basic reasons for California county budget shortfalls: shrinking revenues; reductions in state aid; and rising costs for labor, goods and services. Confronted with pressing fiscal challenges, California county governments have adopted a wide range of traditional budget control measures to close their revenue and spending gaps, such as personnel control and service cuts. They have also become creative and used this opportunity to reexamine their spending, find savings, and improve government operations. In addition, this fiscal crisis provides an opportunity for federal, state, and local governments to work together to address the problems of federalism, health care and pension systems.
Over a decade ago, Bretschneider and Gorr proposed two directions for future research in government forecasting: one was to extend the research on developing and evaluating alternative forecasting methods and the other, to look at forecasting as a human activity and examine how organizational factors affect forecasting. What has happened since then? To see partially what has been done and what remains to be done, this paper provides a review of the literature on government revenue forecasting with a primary focus on the state level and identifies areas for future research in government revenue forecasting.
Due to the limited quantity of phasor measurement units (PMUs) in power distribution systems, the measurement data cannot meet the observability requirements. Thus, traditional methods cannot identify the line parameters under these circumstances. According to the time-invariant characteristic of distribution line parameters in a short period, a classification identification method based on phasor measurement (CIMPM) is proposed for distribution line parameter identification (DLPI) under the condition of insufficient PMU measurements. We use the ability of extracting the main features of a large number of multitime measurements via a convolutional neural network (CNN). The proposed method obtains the estimated line parameters through classifying line parameters and extracting the features of the PMU measurements. Owing to lack of measurements, not all lines can be identified by this method, but some of them can satisfy the conditions of the proposed method. Furthermore, the application conditions for the proposed method with insufficient measurements are analyzed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulation analyses of IEEE 33-bus and IEEE 69-bus systems.INDEX TERMS Distribution network, line parameter identification, phasor measurement unit, insufficient measurements, convolutional neural network.
The past few years have witnessed the rise of local ballot measures in California to limit public employee retirement benefits. What has happened to pension plans in California? Why is there such an attitude change towards public pensions? This paper, based on a survey of California cities, intends to investigate if public pensions have become unsustainable particularly in the face of the recent recession. The research shows city governments in California are facing both financial and social issues concerning their pension plans. To deal with the problems, cities have adopted strategies to reduce pension benefits, increase employee contributions, cut costs in other areas, and take other measures. Cities also have seen the use of the initiative process to control pension costs, balance their budgets and maintain fiscal sustainability.
Abstract:The most recent recession has put considerable stress on state and local government budgets and has pushed public pension reforms to the spotlight. Through the lens of the initiative process, this paper intends to examine the impact of the Great Recession on public pensions in California local governments. Based on a review of the literature and a study of local government budgets, Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports and other reports, this paper reviews 13 pension reform measures passed by voters in California cities and counties in an attempt to answer the question: What has caused the pension measures to be put on the ballot? The paper finds that the recent economic downturn, market crash, poor public decision-making, negative coverage, and inability of the State to solve pension problems all contributed to the rise of local ballot measures on public pensions, and through the initiative process, the voters decided to take public pension reforms in their hands. Essentially, ballotbox pension reforms reveal the public's distrust of government. The victories of local pension mea sures in California have attracted national attention, and may inspire other cities and counties in California and other states to attempt similar actions.
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