Lies, lies, and state/local gov't statistics
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New research indicates that the data CA gov’ts use to justify their extravagant expenditures are (hold your breath) kinda worthless. Daily Caller reports.
California is awash in incomplete and misleading publicly-collected data, and experts say it’s letting policymakers and politicians get away with running the state into the ground.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao (before she was recalled) touted a massive decrease in crime, but it was later revealed that Oakland published misleading non-violent crime data by comparing incomplete 2024 figures with complete figures from previous years, giving the false impression of improving crime to policymakers and the public.
The crime statistics in Oakland are indicative of a larger issue in the whole state, which has routinely used misleading and incomplete data to hide the magnitude of serious issues like homelessness, the COVID-19 pandemic and crime that have ultimately harmed average citizens, according to experts who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“California is wholly determined by ideology,” Christopher Calton, a research fellow in housing and homelessness at the Independent Institute, told the DCNF. “It’s shocking to me how deep-seated the culture is. The absence of accurate data helps policymakers. [Data] might make them look bad, so they gaslight people into thinking crime is better than it actually is.”
Nearly half of all crime in San Francisco goes unreported, according to a poll from local political research group GrowSF collected in September 2023. Violent crime in California has surged in recent years, jumping 26.4% from 2014 to 2022, according to the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).
In addition to crime data, the California healthcare system also faces a lack of information on behavioral health and mental health.
The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) said in an analysis that the data from the state’s behavioral health infrastructure on the need and supply of services is “limited and of mixed quality,” citing an example of the DHCS not knowing how many people were staying under watch for days or weeks while not receiving treatment as they wait for a placement elsewhere in the emergency departments, according to a 2022 DHCS report. In 2020, a state auditor reported that the county-based mental health system contained “disjointed and incomplete” data reporting, saying the “state does not know the extent to which billions in funding has assisted individuals with mental illness.”
Between 2019 and 2021, fentanyl overdose deaths in the state rose by 121%, according to state records. Additionally, California lacked 4,767 psychiatric beds for patients with mental health conditions, according to a 2021 RAND Corporation study.
California announced in May they would allocate $6.8 billion to “counties, cities, tribal entities, nonprofits, and for-profits” to bolster the state’s mental health and behavioral health systems, citing the RAND study and the DCHS assessment as spurring the new funding, according to a May press release.
However, many third parties have had trouble recording important data, with counties, nonprofits and cities receiving large grants from California’s homelessness programs and often not keeping proper tabs on data relevant to their mission, according to Calton. California has spent over $30 billion tackling homelessness and housing since Newsom took office in 2019.
“They weren’t tracking their outcomes. California is acting as a banker government, and these non-profits are not tracking their outcomes,” Calton said. “This is just an example of how there’s no accountability in this. Who can even tell you how effectively it is being spent?”
Read the whole thing here.
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