After New York City’s close call with bankruptcy in 1975. the state required the city to balance its budget in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles rather than continuing to use “creative-accounting practices.” According to Richard Ravitch, writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, the city has not had a fiscal crisis since.

The city’s new mayor,Bill de Blasio, released his first budget last week, beginning the slippery slide back into questionable accounting: Many are questioning whether the deferral of payments contractually due city employees was properly accounted for.

Ravitch’s article describesexactly what most California cities are doing: usingdeceptive cash-basisaccounting to hide real costs and… Read More

Nearly every member of the media in Sacramento is openly advocating for a new basketball arena to be built in downtown. And they are supportive of a massive public subsidy to offset the cost for the owners of the Sacramento Kings. Besides gross incompetence, this is also willful negligence.

A group of citizens and taxpayers known as STOP (Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork), and Voters for a Fair Arena Deal, are fighting the public subsidy of the proposed new arena. According to the lawsuit filed bySTOP, the city subsidy is actually $338 million — not the $258 million the city claims.

STOP has tried to get the details of the arena deal and purchase of the Sacramento Kings to be made public.

Beyond the legal challenge… Read More