Districts may have to pay for state mandates

The California State Legislature will have more freedom to impose mandates on school districts without providing new funding sources to pay for them as a result of a recent California Supreme Court decision. In California School Boards Association v. State of California, the California Supreme Court has allowed the Legislature to point to existing, unrestricted state funding to satisfy the constitutional requirement that it identify funding for such programs, according to an analysis from Lozano Smith Attorneys at Law.

In a recent client news brief, the law firm warned that the Legislature may be incentivized to create new state mandated programs utilizing unrestricted state funding previously intended for school districts’ discretionary use. The reduction in unrestricted funding and the commensurate increase in state mandate programs threatens to erode local control of public education. The CSBA opinion  According to the Lozano Smith analysis, the Legislature passed two bills requiring school districts to utilize unrestricted state funding for these mandates. These bills were challenged as violating the California Constitution’s requirement that the Legislature “reimburse that local government for the costs of the program or increased level of service.” The Court described several permissible ways in which the mandate requirements of California Constitution could be met by the Legislature: 1) provide new funding; 2) eliminate a different program or funded mandate to free up funds to pay for a new mandate; 3) identify new offsetting savings or offsetting revenue; 4) designate previously unrestricted funding as prospectively allocated for the mandate; or 5) suspend the mandate and render it unenforceable for one or more budget years. Thus, the court affirmed the Legislature’s use of the fourth option listed here for the mandates at issue in CSBA. To read the full client news brief visit lozanosmith.com.