Before Sacramento asks for more, it should do better

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OPINION – Over just the past six years, California’s state budget has ballooned from roughly $200 billion to almost $350 billion. That’s a 75% increase.

Does anything in California feel 75% better to you?

California’s budget has grown faster than inflation, population or incomes. But some of our most visible challenges – including homelessness, the cost of homes and energy, and public school performance – have hardly improved or even gotten worse.

It’s time to confront the fact that more spending does not guarantee better results. We owe it to kids trapped in underperforming schools, homeless people suffering on our streets, and every Californian who is struggling to pay rising bills to make our spending more effective – because we need to stop funding failure and start funding results.

Our wasteful bureaucracy, with its endless processes and inefficient tools, is a big reason we are spending more without doing better.  So is outright fraud. We know that up to $32 billion was stolen from our unemployment system in the last five years. The Attorney General’s office warns that fraud in healthcare spending could reach billions of dollars each year. In 2024, 31 percent of financial aid applications in the state’s community colleges were fraudulent.

The people who suffer most from a government that spends more without getting better are not wealthy. It’s working families struggling to pay the bills every month.

One of the main reasons California is so expensive is that we have one of the highest tax burdens in the nation. Despite this reality, Sacramento looks at higher taxes as the first, and frequently the only, response to a problem. Taxing and spending more are not the same as doing and delivering more.

So before we ask for more, let’s do better. That starts with accountability.  One of the most successful laws ever passed in California said that politicians wouldn’t get paid unless they passed a budget on time.  It’s a big reason we haven’t had a late budget since.  Incentives work.

We need a law that says if we fail to make progress on lowering unemployment, the poverty rate, the cost of housing, level of unsheltered homelessness and any number of other easily quantifiable metrics, politicians and political appointees shouldn’t get raises. California needs to get out of the business of rewarding failure.

To root out waste, every major program should have public goals, performance metrics and independent evaluation. If it doesn’t work, reform it. If it still doesn’t work, end it.  And every annual budget should start at zero for planning purposes–so we stop layering more bureaucracy on top of programs that no longer meet California’s changing needs.

This approach must include fixing the plumbing of government by modernizing outdated technology, simplifying procurement, and cutting duplicative layers and laws that slow delivery and inflate costs.

Finally, California – where 75% of the State Auditor’s recommendations are ignored and never implemented – must treat independent audits as action plans, not headlines. Findings from the State Auditor should come with timelines for implementation and consequences for agencies that ignore them.

I’m convinced that if we’re willing to change how we do business in state government, we’ll find the resources we need to teach our kids to read at grade level, bring every homeless person indoors, build the housing we need, lower energy costs, and create an economy that lifts more families into the middle class.

This change starts with admitting the problem, measuring it, and fixing it — not pouring more money into a dysfunctional system.

That’s what we did in San Jose, and it worked. We set public goals, measure performance, publish our results, and hold ourselves accountable. And the results show the power of radical transparency and accountability. San Jose is now the safest big city in America. We’ve built more safe, interim shelter than any city on the West Coast and we’ve reduced street homelessness by nearly one-third. We slashed building fees and wait times for permits and thousands of new homes are now under construction.

We need to take the same approach in Sacramento.  And we can drive change by connecting all of this to the larger political moment. Californians want our leaders to protect the state from the threat of Donald Trump, who is directly assaulting our values and using our state’s failures as ammunition in his war on California. The best way to fight back, and win, is to fix what’s broken and prove to Californians and America our values can deliver results.

Matt Mahan is the Mayor of San Jose and a Democratic Candidate for Governor of California.