California's Natural Resource Programs: Where Does the Money Come From and Where Does It Go?

Notes on the Natural Resource Budget Data

These notes are designed to aid in navigating all twenty-three years of natural resource budget data. All data represented in the report are presented in their original form as presented in the Governor's annual budget document. The amounts listed are taken from the "prior year actual" column. For example, data for the last year (2000-01) are the prior year actual listed in the Governor's 2002-03 budget document. In some cases, the data contained in this file were not used in the published report. Such data as the $7.3 billion for energy resource scheduling expenditures in the 2001 Department of Water Resources budget were excluded from figures in the report but are included in this file.

All of the raw data needed to create the figures for the report can be found in the following three sheets:

1. Program: The program sheet has the program level data.
2. Codes: The codes sheet has resource conservation (RC), resource development (RD), and public safety (PS) codes
3. Operations: The operations sheet has the operations level data including state operations, local assistance, and capital outlay.

The budget and program codes are the same as those used in the Governor's Budget. They are used to organize expenditure totals per department and are defined as follows:

1. bcode: Each department has its own budget code. In early years, these were not always used, so this is an incomplete identifier
2. department: The department name
3. pcode: The program code is typically used to identify a specific program in the budget, of which several generic codes are used, including:
   

   	a.	599:	Administration
   	b.	699:	Total Budget Programs
   	c.	799:	Net Totals, Budget Programs (without Reimbursements)
   	d.	899:	Capital Outlay
   	e.	999:	Total Expenditures

   
   
4. level (program page): These abbreviations refer to the categories of expenditures in the program page. These were created for use only in the PPIC report and are not found in the budget. They are as follows:
   

   	a.	P	Program
   	b.	A	Administration
   	c.	C	Capital Outlay
   	d.	TP	Total Programs
   	e.	TN	Net Totals (without reimbursements)
   	f.	TE	Total Expenditures

   
   
5. level (operations page): These abbreviations refer to the categories of expenditures in the operations page. As with the above abbreviations, these were created for use only in the PPIC report and are not found in the budget. They are as follows:
   

   	a.	O	State Operations (wages, etc)
   	b.	TO	Total Operations (same as TP for programs budgets)
   	c.	L	Local Assistance
   	d.	TOL	Total Local Assistance and State Operations combined
   	e.	TN	Net Totals (same as TN for programs budgets)
   	f.	C	Capital Outlay (same as TN for programs budgets)
   	g.	TE	Total Expenditures (same as TN for programs budgets)

   
   

Each row is a budget program line or a budget operations line. Not all program or operations departments existed during the full 23-year sample. In addition, brief notes are included to explain other irregularities among departments. The categories located at the top of each column delineate five different expenditure funds, subtotals, and personnel years (representing authorized positions for each department) per year and are labeled as:

Data Issues

1. California Tahoe Regional Planning Agency: From 1979-1982, there was no budget specificity. Because the programs for this program are all Resource Conservation, all programs were combined into one overall agency program.
   
   
2. 1991: In 1991, the budget provided no program detail. When analyzing the data with both source variables (general, special, federal, etc.) and activity (resource conservation, development, etc), it will be impossible to use the 1991 data.
   
   
3. Department of Boating and Waterways: No program data are available from 1991-1997. Because all activities were coded as Resource Development, all programs were combined into a single line.
   
   
4. Fire and Forestry: The transfer program is for fire suppression on federal lands. The fire protection program (PS) was altered to include these changes at the program level. This change only affects where funds come from, not overall totals.
   
   
5. Environmental Protection Program: Includes a non-added row for money that is distributed for other departments. This was removed so as not to confuse totals of RC programs.
   
   
6. Parks and Recreation: For fiscal years 1996-97 and 1997-98, there were no specific numbers for administrative PYs. For these two years only, it was assumed that the PYs made up roughly 7 percent of total PYs. Over the entire period, (1978-1998) roughly 7 percent of all PYs were administrative. Similarly, there were no data for the administrative budget line. Here it was assumed that roughly 10 percent of the budget was administrative, as this was the average in the early 1990s. (This makes very little difference in the actual results.)
   
   
7. Department of Water Resources: This is the only department to include capital outlay expenses in the program lines, but only for some years. All capital outlay expenses were removed from the "Implementation of Water Resources Development System" program. For the budgets, all but a tiny portion of capital outlay funds is spent through this program (over 99.99 percent). A more specific removal of these funds is possible by using all the budgets (at least for the subtotal line) but did not make sense at the time.
   
   
8. For a minority of programs in several years, the administrative PYs were distributed in the actual budget lines. In general administration, PYs were treated separately, so these PYs were 'de-distributed' from the program lines to conform with the majority of programs. Note: this does not affect the total PYs in any way. PYs in relationship to the share of total PYs used by a given program were removed. The list of these situations follows:
   
   
   1. State Lands Commission: 1991
   2. Coastal Commission: 1978-1982
   3. Fish and Game: 1991
   4. Parks and Recreation: All years