It's Your Right to
Know:
A Research Guide on Juvenile Justice in California
April 2003
Budgets & Campaign Contributions
Following the money trail usually means getting
your hands on one of the many public records kept here in
the state of California. We will focus here on two main
types of public information: criminal justice department
budgets and campaign contributions to elected officials
from the prison industry or pro-incarceration forces or
other pro-incarceration politicians.
Below you will find a summary of different
types of public records criminal justice activists can use
to obtain information related to criminal justice funding,
both direct and indirect.
Criminal Justice Budgets
Useful
Department Budgets:
• Police Department
• Sheriff Department
• Probation Department
• California Youth Authority
• Department of Corrections |
An agency's budget can reveal a lot of information
about its size, current priorities, and future plans. A
common question for criminal justice activists to ask is
how much of the city or county budget is spent on law enforcement?
The easiest way to answer this question is to get access
to and review your local city or county budget. Remember
that most public agency budgets are public records. Getting
access to budgets can be a relatively easy process that
requires nothing more than a visit to your city or county
head offices (sometimes cities and counties make their proposed
and adopted budgets available online).
Some law enforcements agencies put their
annual budgets online too (as is the case for the Oakland
Police Department) but it' the city and county who are required
by law to keep these records. And remember, you can always
access these records in hard copy by filing a public records
request with the appropriate agency (see appendix for sample
California Public Records Request).
City and County Budgets
Description: Prepared annually. Detailed summary
of receipts and expenditures for city or county governments
(except those exempted by charter). The budget will contain
detailed financial summaries by budget unit or fund title,
sources of revenues, capital expenditures, operating expenditures,
the mission, goals, objectives, past accomplishments, and
future plans of each agency or department. Information on
the maintenance, closure, and expansion plans of a city's
jail system will be in the city budget also. If you're planning
on comparing budgets between different cities or counties
be prepared to deal with widely different formats.
•
City budgets are kept by City Clerk and the Auditor-Controller
• County budgets are kept by the Auditor-Controller
Department Budgets
Description: Prepared annually. Detailed summary
of receipts and expenditures for specific agencies or departments.
The budget will contain detailed financial summaries by
budget unit or fund title, sources of revenues, capital
expenditures, operating expenditures, the mission, goals,
objectives, past accomplishments, and future plans of the
agency or department.
• Department
budgets should be made available by the agency or department,
sometimes available online
Campaign Contributions
Campaign Contributions are a good way to find
out who is funding and supporting your elected political
officials. While reporting of campaign contributions are
relatively standard across jurisdictions, depending on what
type of official you're interested in, campaign disclosure
records are kept by different offices so you have to know
where to go. Below you will find useful sources for accessing
campaign disclosure records for various types of political
officials:
Of City Officials…
City Clerk
Campaign Disclosure Statements-Records
of money raised and spent by city-level candidates, political
committees, and committees supporting local ballot initiatives.
Audits of these campaign disclosure statements are conducted
by the Franchise Tax Board and are also filed with the City
Clerk's office.
Of County Officials…
County Clerk
Campaign Disclosure Statements—Records
of money raised and spent by all candidates for office,
their controlled committees, and committees supporting county-wide
ballot initiatives. Audits of these campaign disclosure
statements are conducted by the Franchise Tax Board and
are also filed with the County Clerk's office.
Of State & Federal Officials…
Center
for Responsive Politics
Open Secrets is the website of the Center
for Responsive Politics. The site can be searched by name
of congress member, by issue, zip code, or keyword (for
example, company name). You can also access total state
campaign contribution information. To get a representative's
personal finances (including stock ownership), scroll down
to the "find a politician" box and enter their
name, when their campaign data pulls up you can click on
"personal finances" on the left side of the page
to be taken to PDF's of their personal finance disclosure
forms.
www.opensecrets.org
Follow
the Money
Follow the Money is the website of the
National Institute on Money in State Politics. The site
contains a public database on campaign contributions at
the state election level (not federal offices). You can
search across states and by issue for contributors as well
as by candidate.
www.followthemoney.org
Secretary
of State
1500 11th St. Sacramento, CA 95814
General Information: (916) 653-6814
You can search Cal-Access (California Automated Lobbying
and Campaign Contribution & Expenditure Search System),
maintained by the Secretary of State, at http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/.
www.ss.ca.gov
A joint project of the DataCenter's
Criminal Justice
Program & Youth
Strategy Project and Books
not Bars
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