SACRAMENTO — A state audit of pet projects funded at the behest of various lawmakers found widespread misuse of the money, with investigators concluding that more than $1.1 million never went where it was supposed to go or cannot be accounted for.
The report, which was released Wednesday by state Controller Steve Westly, cites museum projects that were paid for by taxpayers but never built, project directors who funneled state money into their personal accounts and a city that left the state on the hook for $700,000 after abandoning a sports complex project.
"We have found problems across the board in the way these grants have been administered," Westly said.
The report follows a "pork-barrel" scandal that helped precipitate the resignation this month of Secretary of State Kevin Shelley.
Shelley had helped a campaign contributor secure state money for a community center in San Francisco.
The community center was never built, but the organization that received the grant kept the money -- and organization leaders gave Shelley substantial campaign contributions.
State and federal authorities are investigating whether the grant was the source of the donations.
At issue in the controller's report is $102 million in pork grants given out from 2000 to 2002, when state coffers were flush. The money was distributed by the state Parks and Recreation Department, outside of the normal process for disbursing such funds. Instead of the parks department distributing cash based on its own rigid criteria, the grants were made at lawmakers' direction, with little administrative oversight.
Scores of projects were funded. Westly's office examined 20 that received $14.26 million.
Among the projects most troubling to investigators was the Western Center for Archeology, an organization in Hemet that is constructing a museum with $30 million in state grants.
"There are major concerns there," Westly said. "There are conflicts of interest, we are talking about big dollars, and it is not all accounted for."
"That is one where we will be taking follow-up steps," he said.
Investigators said more than $606,000 may have been misspent. For example, a board member was paid for work, but there was no evidence that the work had been completed.
Museum officials countered that state funds were not used for all of the expenditures in question, and that they have logs that show work was, indeed, performed for the salaries that were paid.
