Copyright© 2007 by School Services of California, Inc.

                                      Volume 20                   For Publication Date: February 16, 2007             No. 4

Ask SSC . . .
 

Is There a Listing of Reimbursements of Mandated Claims? 

Q.        Is there a listing by local education agency of the reimbursements of mandated claims? If so where may I access it? 

A.        The State Controller’s Office (SCO) is responsible for making payments to local agencies, including school districts, for mandate reimbursements and we have attempted to get this information in the past. 

The short answer to your question is no. The Controller’s systems do not compile the mandates by individual district. Instead, they are assembled by each mandate payment. Apparently, the system cannot integrate numerous payments and sort them by payee. 

However, we recently requested information on payments for a specific mandate. This request carried with it a $100 per month processing fee (the disbursements took place over two months). We had asked that the information be provided in electronic form, preferably in an Excel or Access file, but this was not possible. Instead, what we received was a six-inch stack of computer paper totaling more than 1,400 pages. It is not user friendly. 

We don’t know whether the SCO is planning to upgrade its systems any time soon; however, we can attest to the need for such an upgrade. 

—Robert Miyashiro