Andrzejewski
a closer look and taxpayers deserve to be able to follow the money. In 2006, when then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama partnered with Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, to sponsor the Google Your Government Act of 2006, which opened the federal checkbook to sunshine for the first time in history, he said:
“I know that restoring transparency is not only the surest way to achieve results, but also to earn back the trust in government.”
The first step in holding Sacramento accountable is simply seeing where they spend our money. Is the spending in the public interest or the special interest? Was there evidence of self-dealing? Which state program actually helped people who have real needs?
We believe transparency is transformational. Transparency will revolutionize California public policy and politics.
So, OpenTheBooks will do what Yee’s office will not: we are submitting some 500 separate records requests to each and every state agency. Then, like a jigsaw puzzle, we will assemble California’s
Sacramento Police crime scene investigators place evidence markers on 10th street at the scene of a mass shooting in Sacramento on April 3, 2022.
checkbook for the public. Think of it as the public spending genome project. When scientists mapped the human genome, it ushered in a new era of medical progress. When we map all of state spending, just think of the possibilities.
Take for example the recent
waste at the California Employment Development Office. Readers will remember that last October, Director Rita Saenz admitted the state had paid more than $20 billion worth of improper unemployment claims. Digging deeper, the Associated Press reported they’d found a
minimum of $810 million paid out “in the names of people who were in prison, including dozens of infamous killers on death row.”
Elsewhere in the state government, more than $2 million was wasted when Department of Public Health employees
defrauded the government. They were charging personal expenses like “tickets to sporting events, concerts and restaurants” by using “gift cards [and phony companies],” the Fresno Bee reported.
What else haven’t we heard about?
Also last year, while California was reporting a $75 billion surplus, The American Rescue Plan Act was working its way through Congress. The law ultimately provided a massive $26 billion “bailout” of state government. Where is that money being spent and who are the contractors benefiting from this largess?
We shouldn’t have to wait for piecemeal investigations and sporadic scandals to emerge.
All state spending should be exposed online, in real time. Californians deserve these insights just as much as New Yorkers, Iowans, Michiganders or Floridians.
Since Controller Yee and the Newsom administration won’t open the books, we’ll do it for them.