Herb Morgan
State Controller Candidate Herb Morgan Demands Audit, Full Disclosure of $6 Million Nonprofit ‘CART’ Earmark
The state first wrote a check for $250,000 without telling taxpayers what the money was supposed to buy, then did it again with a $6 million budget appropriation
By Katy Grimes, August 25, 2026 2:38 pm
Herb Morgan, candidate for California State Controller, called Tuesday for an audit and full public disclosure of a $6 million state budget appropriation for the Center Against Racism and Trauma, or CART, a Moreno Valley nonprofit founded by Assemblyman Corey Jackson (D-Moreno Valley).
The $6 million appropriation follows an earlier $250,000 state payment to CART that Morgan’s campaign identified in California’s financial records.
“California taxpayers should not have to guess who requested $6 million, what the money is supposed to accomplish or how the state will determine whether it was spent properly,” Morgan said. “That is not transparency. That is a blank check.”
CART was founded in 2020 by Jackson before his election to the Legislature.
On May 20, Jackson named CART the 60th Assembly District’s 2026 Nonprofit of the Year. Roughly three weeks later, a Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee document included an item appropriating $6 million for CART through the Department of Social Services.
Jackson chairs Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Human Services, whose jurisdiction includes the Department of Social Services.
The public budget documents reviewed by the Morgan campaign do not identify the lawmaker who requested the $6 million appropriation.
“That should be an easy question to answer,” Morgan said. “Who asked for the money? California’s budget process should tell us. It doesn’t.”
The $6 million appropriation comes after an earlier $250,000 appropriation to CART.
Morgan’s campaign identified an April 2, 2024, General Fund payment of $250,000 to the organization through the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research.
The underlying budget language listed only the organization and the amount: “$250,000, for the Center Against Racism & Trauma (CART).”
The section also allowed self-attestation by the recipient as an acceptable method of verifying the use of funds.
“The state wrote a check for $250,000 without telling taxpayers what the money was supposed to buy, then allowed the organization receiving the money to attest to its own use of the funds,” Morgan said. “Now the same organization is in the budget for $6 million. California needs receipts.”
CART’s federal tax filing for the year ending June 2024 reported $258,501 in total revenue and $57,667 in expenses. The state’s $250,000 payment represented approximately 97% of the organization’s reported revenue for that year.
The filing reported $234,345 in assets, no liabilities, zero program service revenue and $45,000 in compensation to its chief executive.
Morgan said the Controller’s Office should examine both the CART funding and the broader process California uses to distribute legislative earmarks.
Morgan is calling for public release of:
- The name of the lawmaker or office that requested the $6 million.
- The stated purpose of the appropriation.
- Any application, grant agreement, contract or supporting documentation.
- Required deliverables and performance measures.
- The schedule and conditions for payment.
- Documentation showing how the state will verify the use of the funds.
- Records showing the results of the earlier $250,000 appropriation.
“This is exactly why California needs radical transparency,” Morgan said. “A taxpayer should be able to click on a payment and immediately see who requested it, why it was authorized, who received it and what taxpayers got in return.”
Morgan said the current system makes even basic financial research unnecessarily difficult. The organization appears under different names across state budget records, federal tax records and FI$Cal, making it difficult for taxpayers and journalists to connect the records.
“California calls this information public, but public information that ordinary people cannot find or connect is not real transparency,” Morgan said. “The books should be built to expose problems, not bury them.”
As controller, Morgan said he would make state spending searchable and traceable from appropriation to payment, audit the legislative earmark process and publicly flag payments that cannot be independently verified.
“The Controller does not write the state budget,” Morgan said. “The Controller’s job is to follow the money. That means demanding documentation, auditing high-risk spending and showing Californians where their money went.”
“Six million dollars. Show us the request. Show us the purpose. Show us the receipts,” Morgan said.
A California native and Navy mom, Katy lives in Sacramento, CA.
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I want 6 million dollars. No, wait, all I want is $100. Ok, I will settle for some kind of freakin break at the gas pumps. Is that too much to ask of these low life thieving wanna be thug mafia piece of c**p Progressive Demonrats WHO think they are victims of systemic racism and every other ism out there.
These a~~holes, this a~~hole probably thinks he deserves that kind of payday. Hes a victim. You know who else are victims, every Californian that’s ever lived in this state for ANY length of time.
We ALL are victims of progressive Democrat ideology, regulations, laws, taxes, fees, idiocy, pandering, thieving, grifting, incompetence, lying and it goes on and on and ON!, ESPECIALLY the incompetence and stealing of our tax dollars. But yea. I’ll take $100, if any body’s got it. I doubt anybody does, we live in California. Can we get a BREAK? Somewhere? Please? I said please.
Good luck in getting Malia Cohen, California’s Democrat State Controller, to audit the $6 million state budget appropriation for the sketchy nonprofit founded by Democrat Assemblyman Corey Jackson named the “Center Against Racism and Trauma”?
Malia Cohen had NO previous background in finance, accounting or auditing before she was installed as State Controller despite the State Controller being responsible for overseeing the accountability and disbursement of the state’s financial resources. She has a degree in political science and has been a professional Democrat political hack ever since graduating from college. She worked as a field organizer for Gavin Newsom in his San Francisco mayoral election and was his confidential secretary for two years when he was mayor. After leaving Newsom’s office, Cohen worked as a legislative aide for San Mateo County Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson. In the election for District 10 of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, she placed third but eventually won the election based on ranked choice voting. Cohen succeeded London Breed as president of the Board of Supervisors on June 26, 2018, following Breed’s selection as mayor of San Francisco. Cohen ran in the 2022 election for California State Controller against Republican Lanhee Chen winning the race with the lowest margin of victory for any statewide candidate that election cycle. In the lead-up to her 2022 campaign for California State Controller, Malia Cohen faced significant scrutiny over her personal financial history. The controversy centered on the foreclosure of her San Francisco condo in 2010 and the 2021 suspension of her business license for her social media consulting firm, Power Forward, due to unpaid taxes and failure to file returns.
As State Controller, she released the state’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report well after the reporting deadline and the Internal Control and Compliance Audit Report revealed that the Department of Health Care Services has material weaknesses and severe understatements of expenses within the Medi-Cal program.
Malia Cohen has proven over and over again that she’s not fit to be State Controller. No doubt she was probably installed with Democrat voter fraud and rigged voting machines and she will likely be reinstalled the same way in the next election?
The about two million tax-exempt nonprofit organizations (NPOs) established in the mid 20th century in the U.S. and western Europe have often become subversive, fraudulent and criminal actors. Wielding over $6 trillion dollars in assets, NPOs have prospered in the “charitable charade” of suicidal-empathy scams in government problems like immigration, healthcare, environmental, national security and homelessness. They also play and pay in politics that is prohibited in IRS Code Section 501(c). Stop them!
well….this goes far, far, far beyond the backdoor slush money similar to gavin’s spending to remodel the state capital utilizing NDA’s to silence the majority. No….this is clear and unbridled fraud and corruption. Where else in America do you start a non profit, get elected to state office and then use your position at the state to funnel millions of $$$ into your non profit. If the Feds come calling, there will be a conviction, but it has to be the Feds because Bonta would never go after someone in Club Dem……