Legal Alliance scores win against unfunded mandates

CSBA’s Education Legal Alliance claimed a crucial victory last month in its fight to ensure that school districts and other local governments are properly reimbursed by the state for costs associated with implementing state-mandated programs.

The Education Legal Alliance initiates and supports litigation in cases of statewide significance to all California schools. It was joined in this case by Sweetwater Union High School District, the city of Newport Beach, Fresno County and Los Angeles County in the suit against Assembly Bill 138, passed in 2005.

As a result of AB 138, school districts, county offices of education and other local governments were denied reimbursement of costs—which had previously been deemed reimbursable—that arose from mandated programs such as the School Accountability Report Card, the Mandate Reimbursement Process and certain Brown Act open meeting requirements.

The state is generally required to pay for programs that it requires local governments to provide, but costs resulting from voter-approved ballot measures are not reimbursable. AB 138 sought to expand that exception to include expenses “necessary to implement” or “reasonably within the scope of” voter-enacted requirements. However, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Gail Ohanesian rejected that notion, ruling that the law’s attempt to avoid paying for mandates under the pretext that the required actions were related to expressly stated, voter-approved mandates was unconstitutional.

“AB 138 clearly was part of an overall state strategy to avoid reimbursing local governments, including school districts, for the cost of implementing mandated state programs,” said Dr. Kathy Kinley, president of CSBA. “For that reason, we are very gratified by the superior court’s decision.”

“The legislators thought they’d come up with a way of avoiding mandate reimbursements,” said Education Legal Alliance Director Dick Hamilton, who is also associate general counsel of CSBA. “We cut them off at the pass.”
The judge also ruled in favor of CSBA’s contention that the state could not retroactively avoid paying for mandated actions that had already been performed by merely changing the law after the Commission on State Mandates had found that the mandates were reimbursable. Local governments rely on the commission’s decisions regarding the extent of the reimbursements that would eventually be received from the state. Ohanesian concluded that the Legislature violated the separation of powers doctrine when it attempted to dictate reconsideration by the commission of its determinations.

“This decision is a great victory for California public schools,” said Scott P. Plotkin, executive director of CSBA. “We are hopeful that this decision will help convince state lawmakers that accountability and funding really do go hand-in-hand.”