◼ Losing trust because of found money - SF Chronicle
The California Department of Parks and Recreation found $54 million and lost something far more valuable - the public's trust.
That's the upshot of last week's unsettling revelation that the Parks Department hid $54 million in special funds for more than a decade.
Over the past four years, the cash-strapped state slashed the department budget by more than $50 million. The parks' many supporters responded to the department's desperate pleas for funding under the threat of closure. By beating the bushes, supporters were able to raise just enough money to keep the parks open.
Or so they thought. Now it turns out that the department had money all along, even if $33.5 million of it is part of the Off-Highway Vehicle Fund and can't be used for general operations. This is terrible news for two reasons: First, because the public will be loath to do further fundraising for the park system, and second, because it undermines public faith in the entire state system of government. If the parks department could hide all of that money for all of that time, what are other departments doing?
The state must immediately address this matter with greater transparency. No department should be allowed to hide money from either the Department of Finance or the public.
◼ California parks scandal: Honor system used to keep track of $37 billion in public funds - Santa Cruz Sentinel
With state leaders scrambling to find out how state parks officials kept tens of millions of dollars hidden for more than a decade, California's top finance officials Tuesday acknowledged what could be a far bigger problem: They have no system in place to account for $37 billion in "special funds'' scattered throughout state government.
Instead, finance officials revealed, they rely on an honor system to track money that could be stashed away in untold accounts similar to the funds that turned up last week, sparking a scandal in the state parks department.
Each year, dozens of state departments report how much money they have in more than 500 special-fund accounts, which are separate from the general-fund budget and mostly tap into user fees to make up more than a quarter of all state spending. But no one checks to ensure that the special-fund figures being reported match the actual cash left in the accounts....
The scandal has been a huge embarrassment for the Brown administration, which in campaigning for a November tax initiative had argued that the state was so broke it needed to close dozens of parks.
◼ Hidden Funds, Unaccounted Funds and Tax Increases—Oh My! - Joel Fox/Fox&Hounds
