Posted on 12/11/2021 9:38:36 PM PST by SeekAndFind
In 2018, California resident Steven Childs wanted to know how much the state paid to a single vendor over a five-year period. Instead of the data, California Controller Betty Yee sent him an invoice for $1,250.
Childs asked more questions and the Controller’s chief counsel, Rick Chivaro, admitted the state held electronic records and “warrant records” akin to “maintaining a checking account online.”
Today, in a Sacramento superior court, the controller denies having a checkbook and claims the warrant register doesn’t contain vendor information. The Golden State is the only state in the nation not to produce state spending under open records laws.
Our organization at OpenTheBooks.com is battling the controller in this case over our freedom of information request for the entire line-by-line state vendor checkbook. When the controller rejected our request, we sued.
Yee is claiming her office “couldn’t locate” a single payment. No, that’s not fake news, or a comedy punch line. California’s top financial officer actually argued this in court recently, despite admitting she paid 50 million individual bills last year.
Furthermore, the controller now claims that transparency itself is an “undue burden.” She swears it's necessary to take 72,000 work hours to go through each of the 50 million payments by hand.
Here are some of the arguments Yee is making to stonewall our request:
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
A state may be wasteful. But the information has to be available for the public to view it.
The state claims to have a $60 billion surplus this year. From what I read, according to state law they can’t bank it or spend it, and was planning to send rebates to taxpayers.
California is governed by criminals and inhabited by imbeciles.
Hold yer breath til ya get that check.
That is so clearly a complete crock that the attorney who signed that should be censured.
Bookkeeping programs have been around since at least the mid-90s. Every single one has the ability to search by name. So either the state is lying through its *** or it is operating with 100% paper records. The latter is probably impossible given the staff that would be required to process such payments.
What Yee is really saying is that she would rather spend thousands of $$$ on attorney fees than 5 minutes of staff time to answer a query. That doesn’t seem like a prudent steward of state funds and she should be impeached.
You misspelled “imprisoned”.
The state of Montana has more than $1,000,000,000 in it’s Coal Trust Tax Fund.
Take THAT California!
[snip] In 2018, California resident Steven Childs wanted to know how much the state paid to a single vendor over a five-year period. Instead of the data, California Controller Betty Yee sent him an invoice for $1,250... the Controller's chief counsel, Rick Chivaro, admitted the state held electronic records and "warrant records" akin to "maintaining a checking account online." Today, in a Sacramento superior court, the controller denies having a checkbook and claims the warrant register doesn’t contain vendor information... Yee is claiming her office "couldn't locate" a single payment... California’s top financial officer actually argued this in court recently, despite admitting she paid 50 million individual bills last year... the controller now claims that transparency itself is an "undue burden." She swears it's necessary to take 72,000 work hours to go through each of the 50 million payments by hand... "In order to produce checkbook level data as requested … staff would need to manually review the estimated 50 million transactions ... The public interest served by not disclosing the requested records and data clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure. As such, the [State Controller's Office] is relieved of any obligation to produce the requested records." [/snip]
Alright you b*st*rds, stop questioning the Single Party State, or it might just try to make you disclose your donors list, or some illegal might murder one of your children in broad daylight and be allowed to walk. Wait, what?
Too bad the various proposals to break up California into smaller, more manageable states never go anywhere.
Al Capone raps desk and winks.
Isn’t it the “comptroller”? Does this author have no idea what he’s talking about, or does CA actually name their gov’t positions differently from every other State?
Rope. Lots and lots of rope.
California has no shortage of trees or lamp posts.
L
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3689409/posts
Official Tapped by Biggest U.S. Public Pension Fund Worked for Predatory Chinese State Investment...
. . .The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which manages $360 billion and is frequently described as the most influential pension fund investor in the U.S., has asked Ben Meng to take over the top investment job when its current chief departs at the end of the year, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
In the Wall Street Journal’s report, Meng is described as an official of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, China’s foreign-exchange and currency regulator. His job, however, is not writing regulations or supervising Chinese companies’ foreign exchange reporting.
Meng, a former Wall Street bond trader, is a deputy chief investment officer of SAFE. This suggests his job was to invest the assets of SAFE, which is not just a regulator but also one of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds. SAFE manages over $3 trillion of China’s foreign reserves.
California is the only state to get away with hiding the billions of dollars it has stolen from the people.
“ Does California still have a representative republic”
No.
It has a fascist government.
Should be rather obvious by now.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.