Assembly Bill 2570, by Asm. Joe Patterson, R-Rocklin, would have required state officials to prepare an annual audit evaluating the effectiveness of the state’s primary homeless grant program – the Homeless, Housing, Assistance and Prevention program.
The bill would require the audit to be included in an annual report department officials are already required to prepare outlining the program’s accomplishments during the previous fiscal year. The measure passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the Legislature.
In his veto message, Newsom writes that “he supports increasing transparency and accountability for cities and counties’ use of state funding to address homelessness” but argues that AB 2570 would amount to “an unnecessary ongoing workload.”
Vetoing a measure to actually require transparency and accountability is a strange way to demonstrate support for it.
Newsom’s veto really just says the unspoken aloud – transparency “for thee but not for me.” It is, in fact, the latest move by an administration that is more interested in big check presentations made in front of TV cameras than effectively spending those dollars.
Consider the following:
- The nonpartisan State Auditor’s office released a scathing audit this spring challenging the effectiveness and transparency surrounding Newsom’s state homeless spending, writing “the State lacks current information on the ongoing costs and outcomes of its homelessness programs, because (the California Interagency Council on Homelessness) has not consistently tracked and evaluated the State’s efforts to prevent and end homelessness.”
- At a May Assembly budget subcommittee hearing, Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, grilled administration officials, pointedly asking the executive officer of the California Interagency Council, “you’re coming to the hearing today, we’ve spent billions, and you can’t tell us at all how many people we’ve helped?”
Patterson says of Newsom’s veto, “the state can’t keep cutting corners on accountability when dishing out billions of taxpayer dollars and seeing the problem get worse.”
That’s true, but let’s cut Newsom’s team some slack. Perhaps, in light of the state’s multi-billion dollar budget shortfall, the state doesn’t have the “minor and absorbable costs” the Department of Housing and Community Development says it would take to do the annual evaluation.
We at PRI are happy to provide the administration with a free public service – they can visit our website anytime and read some of our recent studies and analyses showing that taxpayers aren’t getting results with state homeless spending. Here are a few recent examples:
- PRI’s Wayne Winegarden and Kerry Jackson produced some of the first research in the Summer of 2022 showing the ineffectiveness of the administration’s Project Homekey initiative, which Newsom claims has been successfully addressing homelessness. They wrote, “as reporting from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the rest of the Bay Area demonstrates, Project Homekey is costly and rife with abuse and inefficiencies.”
- Writing in the Northern California Record about a recent independently-funded audit evaluating Project Roomkey, the precursor of Project Homekey, Winegarden and Jackson note that “the data tracking Project Roomkey was sparse,” concluding that “a program that is excessively costly, fails the majority of its participants, provides sub-par services, and fails to arrest the growing homeless problem is hardly a success.”
Despite a bipartisan chorus at the State Capitol calling for accountability, don’t expect the veto to be overridden. In fact, a bill hasn’t been overridden in over 40 years.
Perhaps, when lawmakers return from summer recess next month, they should put up a booth and hold a bake sale to pay for the annual audit. That may be the only way to fund the much-needed program oversight that an administration that claims to support transparency and accountability clearly doesn’t want.
Tim Anaya is the Pacific Research Institute’s vice president of marketing and communications and the co-author of the forthcoming book, The California Left Coast Survivor’s Guide.
