In order to better understand the evolution of the Department of Developmental Services (DDS) over time, we attempted to reconstruct the history of its funding since its inception in Fiscal Year (FY) 1978-1979 through to the present day. For this purpose, we relied on three sets of data: the Governor’s Proposed Budget, the Enacted Budget, and the Department of Finance’s estimate of Final Expenditures. We describe each of these data sources in detail below, then present a chart using each source to track inflation adjusted* expenditures over time. Finally for each data source for each FY we provide links to the underlying sources of our nominal (non-inflation adjusted data).

Governor’s Proposed Budget

The Governor’s Proposed Budget is released in January of each year and presents the governor’s preferred level of spending for the upcoming fiscal year (that which begins on July 1st of the current calendar year and ends on June 31st of the following year). We present the Governor’s Budget for DDS for all FYs since the Department’s inception in FY 1978-79. For FY 1978-79 through FY 1999-00 we provide digitized copies of the Governor’s Budget as made available by the California State Library; for FY 2000-01 through FY 2006-07 we provide scans of physical copies of the Governor’s Budget obtained through Stanford’s Green Library; for all subsequent years we link to archived versions of the Governor’s Budget as provided by the California Department of Finance.

Enacted Budget

The Enacted Budget is (customarily) released in June of each year and represents the level of funds approved by the legislature and the governor.  Because of state records retention policies, we could not locate Enacted Budgets for all fiscal years. For FY 1998-99 through FY 2005-06 we provide links to archived versions of the DDS website, which provides Enacted Budget data for all years in that span excepting FY 2001-02. For all subsequent years we link to archived versions of the Enacted Budget as provided by the California Department of Finance.

Actual Expenditures

The Department of Finance’s calculation of actual expenditures represents the best estimate of what funds were spent by DDS after accounting for changing economic/ fiscal conditions that may have occurred after the budget was passed (for example an unanticipated change in federal reimbursements for DDS Services). The final expenditure figures for a given fiscal year are included in the Governor’s Budget released the January after the FY concludes (e.g. the final expenditures estimate for FY 1978-79 are included in the FY 1980-81 Governor’s Budget).

* To adjust for inflation we used the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s CPI Inflation Calculator (for any given FY, we converted the value for December of the initial calendar year—e.g., December 2015 for FY 2015–16—into December 2019 dollars)