California Nixes 700 Costly, Needless Reports

(CN) - An annual summary of Australia's kangaroo harvest is one of more than 700 reports that California will stop producing, Gov. Jerry Brown said.

In addition to Fish and Game's kangaroo report, the list announced Tuesday also includes a monthly report related to the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 from an alternative energy department and an annual report from the Transportation Department about waste tires.

"It wastes a lot of time and money to write, track and file these reports," Brown said in a statement. "Government should be focused on providing information that is actually helpful to taxpayers, not on checking boxes to meet outdated bureaucratic requirements."

In December, the governor ordered all state agencies and departments to audit all their reports and identify those that did not have significant value.

The governor determined that 718 of the reports were unnecessary, and 375 of them require legislative action.

The governor submitted a letter to the Department of Finance asking the state Legislature to end reporting requirements for those reports, and the department will then direct the Legislative Counsel to stop tracking them.

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