Study: Legislators Regularly Overspend

The Stanford University-based nonprofit California Common Sense (CACS) on Wednesday released a study showing that spending by California State Assembly members far exceeds their reported annual budgets.

The data visualization, which can be viewed here, stacks up CACS's estimate of annual Assembly spending against 2009-'10 office budgets provided by the Assembly's rules committee.

CACS President Dakin Sloss said that the organization's estimate of annual Assembly member spending is based on taking a May 2011 monthly office spending report provided by the Assembly's website and projecting those numbers over an entire year.

Sloss said the 2009-'10 budget was provided by local Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada), who requested the information from the rules committee last week as part of his ongoing effort to shed light on legislator spending. 

Portantino's staffers received from the assembly's rules committee in July, as a result of the assemblyman refusing to cut $67,000 from his budget.

Speaker Perez and rules committee chair Nancy Skinner both previously warned Portantino that he would need to cut staff, or risk having his staff furloughed, if he did not make the cuts.

Portatino, though, says that his spending is not out of line and that he is being punished for failing to follow the Democratic party line on key issues, including his refusal to vote in favor of a state budget that was passed in June.



Data Shows Drastic Overspending

In most case, the data visualization provided by CACS shows Assembly members spending far in excess of the amounts reported in the 2009-'10 budget provided by the rules committee.

According to CACS's estimate, Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield (D-San Fernando Valley) was the most egregious spender, reportedly spending $1.68 million in one year despite having a 2009-'10 reported budget of only $200,000.

The data also reports that Speaker Perez spends an estimated $755,316, despite reporting a 2009-'10 budget of $228,871.

Wendy Gordon, spokesman for Assemblyman Portantino, said the data is a strong repudiation of claims by Perez and Skinner that Portatino's budget needed to be cut as a result ofoverspending.

"As you can see from the data, he is nowhere near the top in terms of spending. He is more toward the middle," Gordon said. "He is not the profligate spending he has been made out to be."

According to CACS's budget visualization, Portantino's estimated annual spending is $557,502, compared to the $228,908 reported by the rules committee.



How Reliable is the Data?

While CACS's numbers appear to show drastic discrepencies between reported versus actual spending, their data is based on several assumptions that may undermine the report's accuracy.

According to Sloss, CACS determined annual office spending amounts by calculating how much each legislator spent in May of 2011, and then projecting those numbers out 12 months.

CACS numbers don't take into account the potential reduction of staff members or changes to staff member salaries from month to month.

Sloss stood by CACS's numbers, though.

"Honestly I do think it's an apples to apples comparison," he said. "We're just comparing an apple to a slightly more ripe apple. Even if our data is off by 20 percent, ... that still would not explain the discrepancies. There is no reason for spending to be this far off unless the Assembly hired three times as many staff members this year, and there is no evidence of that happening."

Calls for Disclosure

In previous interview with Patch, John Viga, press secretary for Speaker Perez, said that the Assembly complies with "all aspects of legislative open record law" in disclosing spending records.

However, Sloss said that CACS's report proves that it is difficult to determine just how much legislators are spending per year based on the numbers provided on the Assembly's website.

"We would like to see full disclsoure in a timely fashion," Sloss said.

Patch.com has contacted Speaker Perez's office regarding the CACS study, but has yet to receive a response.