For more than a decade, the California State Auditor has issued warnings to lawmakers about government waste, fraud, cost overruns, and broken oversight systems across state government. Again and again, audits called for changes in state law meant to fix those problems.
In many cases, those fixes did not happen.
CBS News California Investigates recently exposed how lawmakers ignored years of warnings from the California State Auditor about hidden traffic violation fees.
That raised a broader question: What other audit warnings have lawmakers been ignoring, and at what cost?
An exclusive CBS News California analysis of state audit recommendations dating back to 2015 found lawmakers failed to enact three out of every four recommendations that required legislative action.
The unresolved warnings span some of California’s most expensive and urgent problems, including unemployment fraud, homelessness spending oversight, public safety funding accountability, wildfire risk, and drinking water safety, just to name a few.
These are audits the Legislature asked for. Audits Californians paid for. Audits with recommendations that remain unresolved, while California continues to lose money to potential waste and fraud.
California’s Unfinished Business
CBS News California analyzed state audit recommendations dating back to 2015 and found the following.
- California lawmakers failed to act on three out of every four state audit recommendations
- There are more than 300 outstanding recommendations to the legislature
- The outstanding recommendations impacted more than 100 different issues and agencies
- Two out of three state audits include recommendations on which the auditor notes that lawmakers have taken “no action”
at all.
CBS News California Investigates is now building a publicly searchable “Audit Accountability Tracker” to help viewers and voters track what lawmakers have not done and what that inaction costs Californians.
The database is not yet public, but the early findings reveal a series of patterns the Auditor has documented for years: the same problems, the same risks, the same inaction.
Billions lost to fraud and broken oversight
The analysis reveals that some of California’s most costly cases of fraud or untracked spending were the subjects of numerous prior audits. According to the auditor, state losses may have been mitigated if lawmakers had acted on earlier recommendations.
“There would still be issues, but not as serious as we are now,” former California State Auditor Elaine Howle told CBS News California in 2021 while discussing two audits related to pandemic unemployment fraud.
Prior audits warned lawmakers that the state’s Employment Development Department (EDD) left Californians vulnerable to fraud, but by the time lawmakers acted, it was too late.
It’s estimated that California lost more than $20 billion to pandemic unemployment fraud when EDD issued billions in fraudulent payments to criminals while out-of-work Californians struggled to get an EDD rep on the phone, let alone get paid.
Years later, new audits reveal that EDD fraud continues, along with outstanding recommendations to lawmakers.
Homelessness spending offers another example of state audit warnings that lawmakers ignored. The Auditor repeatedly warned lawmakers that California lacks a statewide plan, outcome tracking and accountability for homelessness program spending.
The state spent more than $20 billion without uniform standards to measure effectiveness. Meanwhile, audit after audit repeated the same core warnings while the recommendations to the legislature appear to have stalled.
In many cases, recommended legislation died behind closed doors without a public vote revealing who killed it or why.
It is not just about money
Outstanding audit recommendations also involve risks to public safety and public health that may have been mitigated if lawmakers acted sooner.
For instance, the auditor found that water districts were failing to tell people that their drinking water was unsafe. It’s an issue CBS News California has been covering for years.
The auditor pushed for more disclosure, and lawmakers failed to act.
As wildfires continue to destroy communities, lawmakers take “no action” on auditor-recommended oversight laws and ignore other recommendations related to law enforcement, courts, healthcare for pregnant women, hate crimes, untested rape kits, affordable housing solutions and more.
Lawmakers even failed to act on polices that, according to the auditor, put child abuse victims at risk.
In all, CBS News California identified more than 300 outstanding audit recommendations.
New lawmakers, old warnings
CBS News California Investigates shared some of our findings with Assemblymember John Harabedian, the new chair of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee (JLAC). The JLAC committee decides which issues the auditor investigates.
“When I hear that there are many audits and recommendations that haven’t been addressed, I think that’s a wake-up call, Harabedian said.”
Harabedian is part of a large new class of lawmakers, many of whom were not in office when the recommendations were written.
“I think that being new to the Legislature and now being the chair of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, I am keenly focused on oversight,” he said. “I do think investigative journalism, what you’re doing, is important. It keeps everyone accountable and highlights issues that might not be on my radar or (my colleagues’) radar.”
What comes next
CBS News California Investigates is building an Audit Accountability Tracker, a public database designed to show in one place:
- What the State Auditor told lawmakers to fix
- Which recommendations required changes in state law
- Which ones remain unresolved
- Why they matter to Californians
We are also waiting for additional financial records from the California State Auditor’s office to quantify the potential cost of inaction and potential future savings if lawmakers act.
The tracker will serve voters and viewers as well as the more than 30 new lawmakers who were not in office when many of these audits were issued.
The warnings are written, solutions identified.
The question is, will the new class of lawmakers finish what their predecessors started?
