LAO Report: Like a broken record (with full explanation)

The Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) recently produced a report on certain agricultural research activities undertaken by UC.* Here is an excerpt:

...State Is a Major Fund Source for Both Programs, but State Now Budgets for Programs Differently. Though receiving funds from several sources, both Agricultural Experiment Stations and Cooperative Extension receive more than half of their ongoing operating support from the state General Fund. Historically, UC determined how much state funding from its main budget appropriation to allocate to these programs. In 2018-19, the state began setting the funding amount for UC ANR (specifically, Cooperative Extension) in the annual budget act. In contrast to Cooperative Extension, UC continues to decide how much of its main General Fund appropriation to provide Agricultural Experiment Stations.

Three Concerns With State Oversight of Programs. First, the state has considerably less information, budgetary control, and oversight of Agricultural Experiment Stations than it does of Cooperative Extension despite the two programs being intended to work in concert to address pressing agricultural and natural resource issues. Second, the Legislature lacks sufficient budgetary information from UC to adjust funding for these programs on an annual basis. Third, the state does not receive regular performance reporting on both programs despite comprising the largest source of ongoing funding.

Three Recommendations for Enhancing Legislative Oversight. First, we recommend the Legislature include state General Fund for Agricultural Experiment Stations in the existing UC ANR budget item, thereby budgeting for both programs directly. Second, we recommend the Legislature require UC to submit a budget report in late fall each year providing key information on anticipated operational cost increases. Third, we recommend requiring UC to report periodically to the Legislature on the activities and outcomes of Agricultural Experiment Stations and Cooperative Extension. Together, these actions would improve budget transparency, provide the information needed to make informed budget decisions moving forward, and enhance legislative oversight of the programs... 

What's predictable about the report is that it advocates more legislative control and more - potentially costly and time-consuming - reporting from UC. Some might argue that these recommendations seem like micromanagement, particularly because the Regents are supposed to have a degree of constitutional autonomy. However, the LAO is an arm of the legislature, so it can sound like a broken record** in always pushing for more legislative control, regardless of the topic.

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*https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2022/4490/uc-agricultural-natural-resources-010622.pdf.

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**For younger readers, we provide an explanation of this expression from Grammarist:

Sound like a broken record:

To sound like a broken record is an idiom that is based on a technology that is rapidly disappearing. An idiom is a figure of speech that is a word, group of words or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is not easily deduced from its literal definition. We will examine the definition of the expression to sound like a broken record, where it came from and some examples of its use in sentences.

To sound like a broken record means to repeat something over and over in an annoying fashion. The phrase comes from certain characteristics of a vinyl record, also known as a phonograph record. When a vinyl record has a scratch or a divot, it may either skip over a section while playing or repeat the same section over and over again until the needle is manually moved across the record. A vinyl record is a disc that is a medium for playing back audio, most often music, on a phonograph that uses a needle to read the record. The phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 and used tinfoil cylinders rather than records. Today, the compact disc, streaming music and iPod have largely replaced the vinyl record, though some music aficionados still prefer the rich sound generated by a vinyl record. The expression sound like a broken record, first recorded in 1940, is an idiom that is based on a technology that most people no longer use. It will be interesting to see if it survives in the English language.

Source: https://grammarist.com/idiom/sound-like-a-broken-record/.

We also have an illustration:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqtb6XBBBRc.

And finally, we note that older records were made out of shellac, not vinyl.