Transparency Suite

Fiscal Transparency Dashboard

Representing the “checks and balances” of fiscal responsibility and transparency of County Mental Health programs

This dashboard displays information about funding and expenditures by County Mental Health/Behavioral Health departments in programs under the Mental Health Service Act (MHSA), including revenue from the Mental Health Services Fund, Realignment funds, and Medi-Cal matching funds.

Data for this tool are drawn from the Department of Health Care Services’ (DHCS) Revenue and Expenditure Data File. Given that MHSA funds come with pre-determined timelines, transactional data were processed following a strict first-in first-out order to maximally preserve county’s ability to use the funds and to derive closing balances for each fiscal year (FY). In addition to the data source listed above, data on the Innovation Encumbrance tab is collected from the approved Innovation plans and the project level expenditures on the Annual and Revenue Reports (RER). These dashboards provide additional features including the capability to compare counties and print fiscal data.

The dashboard reports historic revenue, expenditures and local fund balances (“closing balances”) as of June 30th of the reporting fiscal year. These data are submitted annually to the State in January of the following fiscal year (7 months later). Some of the funds shown as unspent may be “encumbered” in contracts for future expenditure or will have been spent before the end-of-fiscal year annual reports are due to the State. Under state law, counties generally have three to five years to expend each year’s MHSA allocations based on plans developed with broad local community participation. You can explore the composition of unspent fund balances on the MHSA Details tab below.

The Innovation component of the MHSA is distinctive in that projects and funding must be approved by the Commission. Senate Bill (SB) 79 changed the policy governing the reversion of INN dollars. Funds approved by the Commission are “encumbered” and not subject to reversion if spent according to the approved project or subsequent extensions. All Commission approved INN projects, starting from FY 2013-14, are tracked in our INN encumbrance dataset. Project encumbrance amounts are adjusted if there are expenditures reported in the RERs.

Butte and Tehama have not finalized FY 2021-22 RER as of March 20, 2024.

Key Findings/Highlights

Compared to FY 2020–21, statewide (with a total of 57 RERs) MHSA expenditures increased by 9.8% to $2.53 billion in FY 2021–22, while revenue has increased by 12.3% to $3.13 billion.
Statewide MHSA closing balance for FY 2021–22 was $3.34 billion, a 21.8% increase from FY 2020–21; and the majority (>$2.61 billion) is from Fund Year FY 2021-22.
For FY 2021–22, statewide non-MHSA expenditure was $1.70 billion, primarily funded by Medi-Cal Federal Fiscal Participation (approximately $1.29 billion).