Agency Reports Help: main

Help Page Index

"Authority" in the List of Agency Reports refers to the legislation that requires or requests a specified agency to provide a report on a certain date or dates. The eight different types of authorities are:

Constitution
Codes
Budget Act
Statutes other than Codes
Resolution Chapters (Concurrent Resolutions)
House Resolutions (Senate and Assembly)
Propositions
Governor's Reorganization Plan

Report Due Dates

The due date(s) for each report is determined by the language in the authority. In most cases, a report will be due one time on a specific date, or several times or continuously on regular dates (such as "quarterly" or "November 1st of each year"). Sometimes the due date specified is "unquantifiable" in which case the date specified cannot be determined until a certain set of conditions occur (such as "60 days after any federal tax legislation is enacted"). In these cases, the reports will not appear to be past due. The text of the authority should be read for each of these reports because that is the only way to determine whether or not a report is due.

Currency of Information

Information in the List of Agency Reports is updated on a continual basis.

Agency Compliance

If a required report has not been received by the Legislative Counsel by the due date specified in the authority, the record for that report along with the reporting agency's name will appear on the List of Agencies with Reports Due. Past due reports are tracked indefinitely until they are filed.

Agencies Not Listed

If a particular agency does not appear in query results for that agency's name or portion of the name, this could be due to one of the following situations:

The agency is currently not required to file any reports
The agency is currently required to file reports, but the due date of the report is older than January 1st of the previous year and the required report has been filed
The agency's name may have changed
The agency may have been eliminated

Report Titles

The report title field may in some cases be blank. This is because the authority does not specify the report title, only the date(s) that the report should be filed. Once a report is received, the report title field will display the title on the report and will remain there until the report is no longer required.

Agency Name Changes

From time to time, an agency's name may be changed by the Governor or the Legislature. The new agency would appear in the List of Reports from that point on, but the original authority will still reference the agency by the old name unless amended. The paraphrase of the legislation in the description of the report record may also reflect the previous name of the agency.

Agency Links

When provided by the reporting agency, links to the agency web site and the online version of the report have been provided.

SEARCHING THE LIST OF AGENCY REPORTS

Search Types
Search Strings
Date and Numeric Searches
Fielded Search
Relevance Ranking

Search Types

The search engine used to query the List of Reports database allows you to choose between three different search types. These are:

Agency
Authority
Description

Select a particular search type by selecting it from the drop-down menu. Then choose whether you want to limit your search to the beginning of the matching phrase or to search the entire field.
Example: the term you wish to search for is "education." If you choose to search the Agency type by selecting "Begins with," you will receive the following list:

Educational Commission of the States

With the same example, if you had selected "Contains" you would receive the following list:

Advisory Commission on Special Education
Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education
California Educational Facilities Authority
Council for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education
County Offices of Education
Educational Commission of the States
San Mateo County Office of Education
Santa Clara County Office of Education
School district governing boards specified in Education Code Section 58523(b)
State Board of Education
State Department of Education
Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee
Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education

Search Strings

The Agency Reports search engine works by looking for an exact match in the search type that you specify. This includes spaces and non-alphanumeric characters. However, it is not case-sensitive. Example: the term you wish to search for is "vocational education." If you choose to search the Agency type by selecting "Contains," you will receive the following list:

Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education
Council for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education

With the same example, if you had typed "postsecondary education" or "private vocational education" you would have received no matches because, although the terms were in the list, the search terms were not typed exactly as they appear in the agency name. As well, if you had typed two spaces between "vocational" and "education" instead of one, you would again receive no matches.

Date and Numeric Searches

The search engine used to query the List of Reports database treats numeric entries exactly the same as text, so an exact match would need to be made.

Fielded Search

This server supports searches of three data types or "fields" in each record: agency name, description, and authority. When one of these is selected, the server will search those fields in each record and return a list of records in which a match was found.

Relevance Ranking

Search results for Agency are listed in alphabetical order based on the sort order for the agency's proper name (example: State Department of Education).

Search results for Description are listed in alphabetical/numeric order by agency name followed by authority name and section or year.

Search results for Authority are listed in alphabetical/numeric order by authority name followed by authority section or year.