He ain't here... (for budget explanations) - Part 5 - But we know where he is

As blog readers will know, we have been following UCLA's budget drama and the quick firing of CFO Agostini for saying that prior to his arrival, UCLA's financials were misleading due to mismanagement. As blog readers will further know, Agostini did leave a kind of legacy, a budget book with his version of the numbers. And finally, also knowledge of faithful blog readers, uncertain definitions of data and words such as "deficit" - along with absence of reserve data - make interpretation of budget information difficult.

But, although Agostini ain't here, we do know where he is. From the Daily Bruin:

UCLA’s former chief financial officer, who abruptly departed the university in February after alleging financial mismanagement, will serve as Culver City’s CFO... Agostini – who previously worked as a CFO in several federal government offices and was the associate vice chancellor of finance and budget at the University of North Carolina – said in the interview that he rarely saw financial mismanagement as extreme as UCLA’s...

The city lauded Agostini in the press release for closing a $300 million budget gap at UCLA and delivered a balanced budget. The release did not mention UCLA’s current budgetary deficit...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/03/31/former-ucla-cfo-stephen-agostini-to-serve-as-culver-citys-cfo.

---

Of course, it's not clear what the $300 million "gap" at UCLA refers to. And our interim CFO will be surprised (pleased? excited?) to know that UCLA budget is now "balanced."

In any case, dear reader, fear not! We are not done with our analysis of the info Agostini left us. Stay tuned!