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FOLLOW THE MONEY

How is LA’s budget allocated?

FY 2026-27 · Adopted budget

The budget as a circle

$00.0B in all, every line sized by its share

In focus: Measure A’s line

Loading the budget…

Budget allocations, not actual spending. Paid for by taxes, fees, grants and other revenue.

Keyboard and screen reader

Tab reaches each cell of the circle; Enter or Space selects it, or opens it when it holds lines. Esc goes up a level. Every category, including the smallest cells, is also in the table under the circle and in the list on a phone.

The same figures as a table

In focus Measure A to the City of Los Angeles

One line of the budget above, followed all the way through. The County view and the City view show the same dollars at two stages of the same fiscal year, FY 2026-27.

  1. The County budgets the fund. In the County view it is the line of the Special Revenue Funds: $96,967,000 as the Adopted Budget Resolution prints the fund’s financing uses (with its $5,816,000 contingency the fund totals $102,783,000). This is the whole Local Solutions Fund, for every city in the County.
  2. The County allocates the fund among cities. Its FY 2026-27 allocations table gives the City of Los Angeles $54,725,376 (County LSF allocations, Table 3, re-posted August 2026, checked October 23, 2026).
  3. The City budgets its receipt. In the City view it is the line under General City Purposes: $54,725,376, 0.37% of the City’s $14.9 billion, funded by “Measure A - Local Solutions Fund (Sch. 29)” as the Adopted Budget prints it.

Three figures, one allocation. They are not added together: the City’s $54.7 million is inside the County’s $97.0 million, and each is already inside its own government’s total above. An appropriation is permission to spend as adopted. None of these figures shows that money has been received, committed or spent; those are separate records, kept apart in the example.

It is not the whole homelessness budget of either government: the County’s other Measure A lines sit beside it in the same fund group, and the City Controller’s dashboard counts about $750 million of City homelessness spending across departments for 2026-27 (City of LA Homelessness Spending Dashboard, read November 3, 2026). The example follows this one allocation: allocated, approved, paid and spent kept distinct, with the record each rests on and the date it was checked.

Explore the Measure A example

Locate opens the government view that holds the line, selects it, and shows its share of that government’s total. The line sits inside a fund group or a department, not at the top of the circle.

What the example contains, and what is not here yet
  • An overview first: one allocation, $54.7 million of Measure A Local Solutions Fund money to the City for fiscal year 2026-27, in four summary figures and a proportional chart of its approved uses.
  • Then the records, grouped in four sections: allocations and approved uses, agreements and payments, service spending and outcomes, sources and unresolved questions.
  • What remains unknown, and which office holds the record that could answer it. Every figure’s source, and the reading rules behind the chart.
  • Not here yet: spending by the providers who deliver services, which the sources reviewed for the example do not show. Each later worked example is added as an In focus line on this map.

Figures in the example were checked on October 24, 2026. “Not found in the records reviewed” means exactly that, not that an event did not happen.

How to read these numbers

Allocations as the Council and the Board adopted them, not spending; the money comes from taxes, fees, grants and other revenue. Each government is its own view; the two totals are on different accounting bases and are not added together.

Colors tell the printed groupings apart (the County’s fund groups; the City’s departmental and non-departmental sections of Exhibit A), and nothing more: no color means good or bad. Cell areas match each line’s share of the displayed total; the layout stops when every area is within 0.5% of its share, and the automated checks allow 2% for a group and 3% for a line.

Sources