Cobb

Certified for Partial Publication. [*]

Appellants are Oakland residents and taxpayers, who contend that the California Legislature's passage of special remedial legislation in 2003, which was designed to save the Oakland schools from financial insolvency, violated the "home rule" provisions of the California Constitution and the Oakland City Charter. We affirm the trial court's ruling, which rejected appellants' contentions. In the published portions of this opinion, we address appellants' claims of a conflict with provisions of the California Constitution and the Oakland City Charter. In the final, unpublished portion of this opinion, we address appellants' claims of a waste of public funds.

We draw the relevant facts from appellants' first amended complaint. During the summer of 2002, the Oakland School District discovered that it had incurred a deficit of $31 million, due to errors in estimating expenses, failures of oversight, an outdated computer system, and other locally occurring problems. The Oakland schools also faced a projected deficit for the next year of over $50 million, although steps were put in place to reduce this projected deficit to $25 million…