At one point in the struggle, after the organization sued for the spending data, California Controller Betty Yee claimed in state court that officials couldn’t provide it to OpenTheBooks.com or anybody else because the state has no central payments database.
Yee also claimed that compiling the data would be an excessive burden on officials because the state receives volumes of paper payment documents from thousands of suppliers and vendors every year.
At that point, OpenTheBooks.com’s auditors took on the herculean task of submitting separate public records requests to each of California’s 469 individual state agencies, boards, and commissions, and then compiling the data in an accessible public database.
Among the first revelations, the checkbook revealed that California officials paid out nearly $76 billion to more than 64,000 vendors in 2021. For the first time in the Golden State’s history, every individual taxpayer with a computer and internet access can see what officials are buying with tax dollars and, in turn, make voting decisions on a much more thoroughly informed basis.
Much work remains to be done, however, because 25 junior colleges, the University of California at Irvine, and the state university system’s Board of Regents refused to provide requested data, Andrzejewski says.
He told The Epoch Times that his group will go after spending data being hidden by the uncooperative education organizations with the same determination.
“We will not rest until every dime is online in as real-time as possible. So, all options are on the table, including more litigation to force these California junior colleges, the Board of Regents, and the University of California-Irvine, to open their line-by-line checkbooks,” Andrzejewski said.
“We are inviting them to join the transparency revolution. They can do it the lawful, easy way, or the hard way. In any event, we will force open their spending,” he added.
OpenTheBooks.com auditors have uncovered spending that’s likely to spark new controversies, including big checks made payable to two of the wealthiest private foundations in the country.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation got $436,336 in state payments, as well as almost $20,000 for the Gates Millennium Scholars program. The Gates organization has an endowment of nearly $50 billion.
The San Francisco-based Tides Center, which has $126 million in net assets, is known as one of the originators of the “dark money” technique of providing an anonymous tool for wealthy donors who want to fund radical left-wing activists to do so without being publicly identified.
The California checkbooks show that the Tides operation received nearly $4 million from state taxpayers, including $50,000 paid to the related Tides Advocacy, a nonprofit activist group that works to defund the police.
The state attorney general’s office has 3,700 employees, including 1,100 lawyers. Even so, according to the checkbook, four of the Golden State’s most prominent law firms—Munger, Tolles & Olson ($3.4 million), Loeb & Loeb ($2.8 million), Musick Peeler ($1.7 million), and Reed Smith ($1.6 million)—were on the receiving end of big tax-funded payouts.
While OpenTheBooks.com battled with California officials for a decade, that wasn’t the nonprofit’s first tussle with recalcitrant state leaders.
It took seven years of litigation to dislodge the Illinois state government’s checkbook, while in Wyoming’s case, it took six years.
In addition to the 50 state government checkbooks as well as those of thousands of municipalities around the country, the nonprofit’s website also provides access to most federal spending, including the compensation paid to millions of career civil servants.
The work of the nonprofit was originally made possible in 2006 after then-Sens. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, and Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, won congressional approval and President George W. Bush’s signature on the Federal Financial Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA).
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