Jon Coupal: Santa Jarvis’ Annual Naughty and Nice List
The mood is right. The spirit’s up. We’re here to give you Santa Jarvis’ annual taxpayer naughty and nice list during this wonderful Christmastime!
First, let’s talk about who was nice! Capitol media continues to find themselves on the nice list. Ashley Zavala, Eytan Wallace, Alexei Koseff, Ryan Sabalow, Katie Grimes, Emily Hoeven, Jeremy White and Dan Walters among others are doing a fantastic job asking tough questions and making the comfortable uncomfortable.
Also worthy of mention are our state watchdog agencies, the Legislative Analyst’s Office and the California State Auditor.
When longtime state auditor Elaine Howle retired after 21 years in the office, we were worried that the office would be captured by special interests, so it is pleasing to see that the new state auditor, Grant Parks, hasn’t shied away from telling it like it is.
In one new report released by the state auditor, they found more than $5.1 million of waste, misuse or improper spending of taxpayer funds. But that pales in comparison to the “state high-risk government agency audit program” that found eight agencies are at risk of “waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement” or “impaired economy, efficiency or effectiveness.”
To make matters worse, those two reports came shortly after the Legislative Analyst’s Office released its own report that the state faces an $18 billion shortfall for the 2026-27 budget, Gabe Petek, the state’s legislative analyst, has been a dogged budget hawk over the objections of the tax-and-spend interests.
Finally, and you might find this surprising, but Gov. Gavin Newsom finds himself on the nice list for vetoing several bad bills including Assembly Bill 699 that would have weakened ballot transparency of local tax and bond measures. We must give credit where credit is due.
Now for the naughty list.
Well, Gov. Newsom gets himself on this side of the list, too, for signing a bunch of bad bills into law that included making it easier for local agencies to raise your taxes. Santa Jarvis’ giveth and taketh away.
Next up, remember those eight state agencies at high risk? Well, they all go on the naughty list. They are:
- The California Department ofSocial Services because “errors in calculating CalFresh benefits reduce program effectiveness and could increase costs to the state due to federal legislation.”
- Employment Development Department because it “continues to struggle with improper payments, claimant service, and eligibility decision appeals.”
- Department of Finance and various agencies because of the state’s poor management of federal COVID-19 funds.
- State Controller’s Office and various agencies because it never releases its financial reporting on time.
- Department of HealthCare Services because they have “not adequately demonstrated progress to resolve problems with Medi-Cal eligibility determinations.”
- Department of Technology and various agencies for poor information security and for not making “sufficient progress in its oversight of state IT projects.”
- Department of WaterResources and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services because “deteriorating water infrastructure and climate change may threaten the lives and property of its residents and the reliability of the state’s water supply.”
Finally, Tom Steyer, billionaire and Democratic gubernatorial candidate, finds himself on the naughty list this year for suggesting in a recent interview that California should implement a split-roll property tax that would “split” commercial property off from Proposition 13.
Voters rejected a split-roll property tax in 1978 (Proposition 8) and in 2020 (Proposition 15) and a strong majority of California voters continue to recognize that the cost of living will go sharply higher if long-held commercial properties are reassessed to current market value every year for taxes.
For that, Mr. Steyer deserves a chunk of coal so big all the carbon credits in the world couldn’t pay it down.
Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.