By Katy Grimes | CalWatchdog
SACRAMENTO – Proving once again why California needs a part time Legislature, a recent news story about state-funded cars for legislators showed some bad deals and financial abuses. But the rest of the story is not just who drives which car, and how much it costs; the story is the lack of transparency over perks and benefits.
Senate Shenanigans
Three weeks ago I was contacted by Capitol staffers who reported that there was a small group of Senators making a push to receive state-funded cars again, after the California Citizen Compensation Commission cut legislators’ cars.
But the way the cars were going to be concealed was even more interesting. the cars were going to be designated “district cars.”
Some legislative districts have a “district car” so that staffers don’t have to put miles and wear and tear on personal vehicles. But other legislative districts have found that managing a district car is a bigger bookkeeping and administrative problem than it is to ask staff to keep track of mileage for reimbursement.
I contacted the Secretary of the Senate, Gregory Schmidt, for an answer. “That’s not going to happen,” Schmidt said. And Schmidt ought to know since he was the guy burdened with cleaning up the last Senate car fiasco.
Calls to different Republican and Democratic Senate offices all resulted in the same answer: “We haven’t heard anything about this.” The deafening silence coming from the Senate makes me wonder if some Senate offices really have not heard anything about receiving state-funded cars again, or an Edict from on High was passed down.
And then today, before I could make any more calls, I received the following response from Republican Senator Joel Anderson’s office: “All media inquiries regarding administrative items, such as the Senator’s transportation, should be addressed to Greg Schmidt of the Senate Rules Committee.”
Since I already talked to Schmidt, it appears that this is a topic that some in the Senate want to go away.
