Gavin Newsom Campaign Received Millions in Donations from Entities Paid Billions by State of California 🔥

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BREAKING INVESTIGATION NEWS: California Gov. Gavin Newsom Campaign Received Millions in Donations from Entities Paid Billions by State of California 🔥

OpenTheBooks.com is calling for reforms from the next controller, including pay-to-play limitations.

SACRAMENTO – Government spending watchdog OpenTheBooks.com announced today that California Governor Gavin Newsom’s campaign has received nearly $10.6 million in donations from 979 entities since 2010, and they were paid $6.2 billion as state vendors last year. The top thirty entities receiving payments from the state of California received over $5 billion last year and gave more than $1.5 million worth of campaign donations.

The news comes following OpenTheBooks.com successfully posting California’s state “checkbook” last week after a decade-long fight for disclosure through the terms of two different state controllers. After State Controller Betty Yee successfully shut down the group's request in court, OpenTheBooks.com went around her office and filed 442 separate public records requests with every state agency. Nearly all responded, allowing them to post 6.154 million payments records online from 415 state agencies. Those agencies wrote checks to 201,684 entities totaling $87.2 billion in fiscal year 2021.

27 state agencies, comprised of junior colleges and two public universities, along with the State Board of Regents, continued to ignore our request. 

OpenTheBooks.com Founder & CEO Adam Andrzejewski called for reform following the announcement:

“A new controller will be elected in November, and we are asking them to embrace the transparency revolution and fulfill our sunshine request in the years ahead. Every other state financial officer is able to do this subject to a single sunshine request. It is simply ridiculous that we are forced to file 442 separate requests for data that is owned by the public. Furthermore, our findings show that California needs a statewide, pay-to-play prohibition. Major corporations with quasi-state monopolies in their given industries are recycling millions of their profit dollars back into the politicians. This practice is legal in California today, but that doesn’t mean the public will find it ethical.”

 

“We’ve done what Governor Newsom, Controller Yee, the attorney general, a superior court judge, and countless bureaucrats have refused to do; lawmakers in Sacramento have a duty to make sure the problem ends now.”

A searchable database of state payments is available here, and a map of donations by zip code to Newsom for Governor from 2010-2022 is available here.

 

AVAILABILITY: Immediate

MEDIA CONTACT: Jaclyn Anastasakos c: 718-354-7704 e: J.communications.pr@gmail.com 

BACKGROUND

OpenTheBooks.com waged a years-long battle to obtain all of California's expenditures, through open records requests and later in Sacramento Superior Court, where the organization sued for the information. These payments are made available in every other state. But California Controller Betty Yee has said it is an “undue burden” to provide them because the state lacks a central payment database and receives hundreds of thousands of payment documents by paper only, their justifications held together with string. So OpenTheBooks.com did it for them.

 

VIEW CALIFORNIA’S 2021 CHECKBOOK HERE

“Historic Announcement– California’s Books Are Open – 64,000 Vendors Received $76 Billion In State Payments” (OpenTheBooks.Substack.com, 25 August 2022).

“California Wants to Keep $300 billion in spending a secret” (Orange County Register, 22 May 2022).

"California is the Only State to Hide its Spending -- Nearly $300 Billion a Year" (Forbes.com, 7 December 2021).

"California State Controller ordered to comply with further briefing in lawsuit seeking public records" (Northern California Record, 15 September 2021). 

OpenTheBooks.com works hard to capture and post all disclosed spending at every level of government – federal, state, and local. In 2021, the organization filed 47,000 Freedom of Information Act requests and successfully captured $12 trillion in public expenditures. OpenTheBooks.com is rapidly growing its database in all 50 states down to the municipal level. Their goal is to capture every dime taxed and spent and post it online, in real time.