Last month, the California Legislature unanimously approved legislation, Assembly Bill 2903, authored by Asm. Josh Hoover, R-Sacramento, to require state agencies that administer homeless programs to “annually report cost and outcome data to the California Interagency Council on Homelessness” for each program they administer.
This might sound like common sense, but remember, this is California state government we’re talking about.
This legislation followed a state audit report that concluded, “The state lacks current information on the ongoing costs and outcomes of its homelessness programs, because [the California Interagency Council on Homelessness] has not consistently tracked and evaluated the state’s efforts to prevent and end homelessness.”
In addition, another “significant gap in the state’s ability to assess program’ effectiveness is that it does not have a consistent method for gathering information on the costs and outcomes for individual programs.”
While the state has certainly spent a lot of money ostensibly to fight homelessness, there hasn’t been a consistent effort to coordinate, monitor or assess the effectiveness or efficacy of that spending.
Because, again, we’re talking about California state government, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed AB 20903. “While I fully support efforts to increase accountability and the effectiveness of our state homelessness programs, similar measures are already in place,” he wrote in his veto message.
In response, Hoover told the Sacramento Bee, “Our state has spent billions of taxpayer dollars in recent years only to see homelessness get worse. We will not solve this crisis and get people the help they need until we get serious about accountability.”
Hoover is obviously right and Newsom’s commitment to accountability and effectiveness is suspect at best. After all, the lapses in homeless spending accountability happened on his watch.
If the government is going to be spending billions of dollars combating homelessness, the public should at least know that the government is taking steps to ensure public funds are being used wisely. That should be a baseline expectation. But, again, this is California state government.