Maintenance Issues and Living Conditions at Juvenile Halls

The categories used to describe the Place-Based components in budget and expenditure documents changed between FYs 2010- 11 and 2013-14, making it difficult to track expenditures by activity over time.

In Fiscal Years 2012-13 and 2013-14, all budget line items for the Place-Based Strategy were collapsed into a single line item documented as, Best Start. This provides the Commission and the public with few details about how funds were being used. It minimizes the means for First 5 LA management to expend funds in accordance with specific Commission direction. A transmission letter to the First 5 LA Commission presented more detail on Place-Based budgeted expenditures for FYs 2012-13 and 2013-14 however, this information was not included in the budget document itself and therefore not compared to actual expenditures.

Place-Based Strategy budget and actual expenditure information for all years reviewed do not represent Agency operating budget expenditures, which averaged $2.8 million per year for the first three years of the rollout.

Budget and actual expenditure documents presented to the Commission do not track Place-Based Strategy spending per each of the 14 communities being served. This practice makes it impossible for the Commission to compare the level of funding with the outcomes achieved in each community.

Not until FY 2012-13 did budget documents provide a greater level of detail as to how funding for the Place-Based Strategy was being spent. In that year, budget detail showed that approximately half of the funds were being spent on marketing, communications, and research and evaluation for the Place- Based strategy. 169 2013-2014 LOS ANGELES COUNTY CIVIL GRAND JURY FINAL REPORT FIRST 5 LA SERVING THE COMMUNITY?