SACRAMENTO, CA -- Every time a measure for school choice comes along, state officials warn of chaos and claim that only the current education establishment can protect fiscal responsibility. Only the willfully blind can believe that claim in California, where left-wing organizations have been looting taxpayers, with the full assistance of public officials, aided and abetted by a biased and ignorant press.

California’s Department of Education (CDE) is responsible for administering federal adult education funds to so-called "community-based organizations" or CBOs. Robert Cervantes, an assistant state superintendent, recently revealed that a group of these CBOs could not account for how they spent as much as $50 million. There were no controls, he said, making it the worst case he had ever seen. The money had gone for such educational items as luxury automobiles, motor homes, and jewelry. In one case, a woman had used the public funds to purchase an 18-wheel Mack big-rig for her husband’s trucking company. The trouble was, some of these organizations had ties to state politicians, who wanted to keep the money flowing to their cronies.

Bert Corona, the boss of one CBO, Hermandad Mexicana Nacional (The Mexican National Brotherhood), is an old-line leftist and hero to Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, Gil Cedillo, Sheila Keuhl, and others. Corona threatened Cervantes, who stuck to his guns. Then the CBO leader told politicians, including Senate Majority Leader Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) and Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, that something had to be done about this pesky auditor. It was.

State Education Superintendent Delaine Eastin obediently had Cervantes fired, and she did not change her position when, in July, a state auditor’s report on the CBOs confirmed all of Cervantes’ charges, and then some.

Corrupt CBOs were billing the state for millions of hours and non-existent students. One showed every student attending every weekday from August 1997 to April 1998, including Labor Day, Christmas, New Years, and Thanksgiving. One student was shown attending 3,406 hours in five classes, a schedule that would have required a nine-hour class day.

Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante urged that one adult "school" be funded. This school had upped its demand on the state from $35,000 to $2 million in one year. But it lacked non-profit status and its classrooms were little more than empty fields. The CDE promptly reassigned the auditor in that case and has fired, suspended, or reassigned some who supported Cervantes. Obviously the wrong people were fired. And it gets worse.

According to auditors, one CBO owned up to misconduct and attempted to give some money back but the Department of Education refused to accept it. The CBO took this as a license to pocket more public cash.

Governor Gray Davis failed to use the fraud case to show his leadership, offering no comment, and state Education Secretary Gary Hart confirmed his irrelevance by also saying nothing. The timid and partisan Sacramento Bee conveniently buried the story, but it is not over.

Some of the worst CBOs have been defunded but the state does not stand much chance of recovering the millions it lost. And Assemblywoman Nell Soto (D-Los Angeles, San Bernadino), Senator Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), and others are already backing legislation, AB 33, to restore millions in funding to the CBOs through school districts. California is indeed a golden state for some and, under the current administration, well on its way to a full-blown kleptocracy.

--K. Lloyd Billingsley