After nearly a decade of unprecedented taxpayer spending on homelessness with little to show in improvement on the streets, the giant nonprofits behind the measures that secured that funding asked voters to double down.
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To assuage concerns that past funds may have been dispensed rashly, leading to waste and abuse, the authors of two new tax measures wove into them a complex system of oversight to increase transparency and accountability.
Voters accepted the deal, and this year, $1.5 billion or more from the two measures — ULA and A — will be flowing in orders of magnitude more than the previous ones.
One consequence of the promise of oversight is a new slate of abbreviations for the public to digest: ULACOC, LTRHA, ECRHA and LACAHSA.
Behind those names is a matrix of oversight boards, some made up of experts from government, business, housing development and homeless services and others of city and county elected officials and prominent nonprofit leaders.
The new quasi-government structure created by Measure A has broad goals and specific targets to gauge whether the goals are being achieved, said Miguel Santana, president and chief executive of the California Community Foundation, the measure’s primary backer.
“We’re in Day One of this new chapter on this issue where my hope is that generations from now, it will become instinctual,” Santana said in an interview. “It will be second nature, it will be a given that investments around homelessness will always be evaluated against the goals that have been set.”
But there can be a downside to the proliferation of deliberative bodies that meet at different times and multiple locations and monitor programs that can overlap both in purpose and geography.
For decision makers, there are now two or more regular meetings to attend, and, for the public trying to follow the money, it could all be very confusing.
Stupid is as Stupid does.
Let’s give the homeless all the money they want……. it will only attract more and more and more and more…..
Getting it? There is never enough money for the Socialist …. that is what brought down the USSR.
“But there can be a downside to the proliferation of deliberative bodies….” Anyone heard of County Associations of Governments?
Getting it yet?
Do you mean CSAC? California State Association of Counties? That CORRUPT EVIL COMMUNIST Entity that gathers the most Marxist County Board of Supervisors that are trying to REPEAL PROP. 13?
Politicians love two things: Power and money. True transparency and oversight would slow down both. That is why a bunch of new agencies have to be established to obfuscate the issue and make sure it is even more difficult to track the money.
Throw them out of office. Get a back bone. Run Screwymento like a business. Cut costs; increase productivity. Eliminate 90% of all departments. Privatize.
Remember – OUR elections in CA have NOT been legal!!!!! Voters vote while dead, they vote double, and they vote when they aren’t citizens!!!! More crap from the Dim political party!!!!
Prove it to me.