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Analysis of the 2004-05 Budget BillLegislative Analyst's Office
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The Department of Education's State Special Schools and Services Division (division) operates three schools for students with exceptional needs—two for the deaf at Riverside and Fremont, and one for the blind at Fremont. The budget includes only one capital outlay request, which is for $69.9 million from lease-revenue bonds for preliminary plans, working drawings, construction, and equipment to construct 13 replacement dormitories and three apartment facilities, and to provide a central chiller plant to air-condition the Riverside school.
In the 2003 California Five Year Infrastructure Plan, the division identified a need for 13 projects at a cost of $70 million, primarily to modernize existing infrastructure. Figure 1 shows the amounts identified by the division for 2003-04 through 2007-08.
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Department of
Education, |
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(In Thousands) |
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2003-04 |
2004-05 |
2005-06 |
2006-07 |
2007-08 |
Total |
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Needs
Identified by Division |
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Workload
space deficiencies |
— |
$1,007 |
$8,391 |
$807 |
$3,907 |
$14,112 |
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Facility
infrastructure |
$1,967 |
18,139 |
14,361 |
3,016 |
12,651 |
50,134 |
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Critical
infrastructure |
597 |
4,949 |
54 |
— |
— |
5,600 |
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Totals |
$2,564 |
$24,095 |
$22,806 |
$3,823 |
$16,558 |
$69,846 |
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Projects
Scheduled for Funding |
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Workload
space deficiencies |
— |
— |
— |
$500 |
$4,914 |
$5,414 |
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Facility/infrastructure |
— |
$20,928 |
$1,027 |
10,499 |
17,546 |
$50,000 |
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Program
delivery changes |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
— |
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Critical
infrastructure |
$5,600 |
— |
— |
— |
— |
5,600 |
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Totals |
$5,600 |
$20,928 |
$1,027 |
$10,999 |
$22,460 |
$61,014 |
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General
Fund |
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$34,486 |
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Special
funds |
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26,528 |
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Approved
in 2003-04 and Proposed in 2004-05 |
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Totals |
$5,600 |
$69,948 |
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$75,548 |
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We recommend the division report at budget hearings on the reason its proposal in the Governor's budget had not previously been identified as a priority project.
As noted above, the department identified in the 2003 infrastructure plan a need for $70 million over the next five years for 13 different projects with individual project costs ranging from less than $1 million to $14.5 million. The Governor's budget, however, proposes to spend almost $70 million in 2004-05 on a single project that has not been previously identified as a priority in prior infrastructure plans. This is not to say that under certain circumstances major new projects will not sometimes emerge that are of high priority. These situations, however, should be rare. If the state's long-run infrastructure plans are to have meaning, they need to be comprehensive. That is, departments should identify all possible projects which address high priority needs. Accordingly, we recommend that the division report at budget hearings on why the project proposed for funding in the budget had not previously been identified as a priority project.