I served in the California State Senate for six years, from 2015 to 2020. While there I was given an office on the second floor not far from being able to observe what occured on the first floor of the...
Open the Books has focused its government transparency and auditing attention on Governor and Mrs. Newsom’s pay-to-play schemes, which have been personally benefitting California’s first couple. In one report, Open the Books reveal that large corporate campaign contributors gave campaign cash...
In August and September 2022, the Globe shared a report by Open the Books, which sued, and then had to file 442 California Public Record Act requests – one with each state agency – in order to obtain California’s line-by-line spending by...
“California Governor Gavin Newsom has quietly solicited millions of dollars in campaign donations from state vendors, key people, employees, or their affiliated corporate political action committees,” Open the Books reports. “While progressives decry corporate money in politics, Governor Gavin Newsom...
In January 2020, Open the Books sued California Controller Betty Yee in a Sacramento Superior Court after her office rejected their sunshine request for state spending. Yee claimed that she “couldn’t locate” any of the nearly 50 million bills she...
In 2019, California Globe reported that the California Department of Education had released an unintelligible draft of ethnic studies gibberish, which included a section on “Islamophobia.” The Legislature’s Jewish caucus, all Democrats, took umbrage with this, and issued a statement:...
If you want current financial information on California’s state government, you won’t find it. The most recent consolidated annual financial report for California’s state agencies is for the fiscal year ended 6/30/2018. That’s over two years, or nine quarters ago. To put...