Guest editorial: State lawmakers have a bad habit of ignoring good advice

Every year, the California state auditor issues dozens of reports about state and local programs. And every year, state lawmakers ignore the auditor’s recommendations about how to make government better. That needs to change.

An analysis by CBS News California found that over a decade the Legislature failed to act on three-quarters of recommendations made by the state auditor. That is more than 300 lost opportunities to fix problems with unemployment fraud, homelessness spending, wildfire risk, drinking water safety and dozens of other critical issues.

This is an unconscionable dereliction of duty. Lawmakers themselves requested many of those audits, and the taxpayers funded them. The reports identified solutions and handed them back to the Legislature on a silver platter. But the Legislature in most cases promptly filed them in the trash.

Granted, these are just recommendations, not mandates. The Legislature is free to ignore the recommendations of experts just as a patient is free to ignore a doctor who recommends exercising more. The difference is that the patient harms only himself, while the Legislature risks harming all Californians.

Perhaps lawmakers concluded that the recommendations were bad. If that’s the case, let’s stop paying for them.

That is not the case, though. State audits are almost always spot on. The auditor’s office is nonpartisan and professional. Its only goal is to improve California.

Reading state audits helps to better understand how California’s government is doing and how it could improve. Audits are consistently high quality and make sensible recommendations. Sometimes lawmakers introduce a bill that aligns with an audit recommendation, but too often those bills die in committee or behind closed doors.

Inaction trickles down to state agencies. If lawmakers do not heed audit warnings, why should state departments? As of August 2025, departments, bureaus, agencies and boards had not fully implemented more than 100 recommendations issued from 2021 to 2024. Local agencies had not fully implemented dozens more.

The cost of ignoring expert analysis is tremendous. State auditors warned multiple times that California was spending more than $20 billion on homelessness services without any means of tracking outcomes and accountability. Similarly, the auditor has reviewed the Employment Development Department’s long-running issues with fraud that have cost the state more than $20 billion, but there has been little action to fix it.

Public safety remains needlessly vulnerable. Five recommendations for the Legislature in a 2022 report that studied electrical system safety related to wildfires remain unaddressed.

Lawmakers spend lots of time grandstanding and passing messaging bills that fire up their base. No doubt that is more fun and satisfying than sitting in a committee room overhauling a broken procurement system. But the latter is what Californians elected legislators to do.

Assembly member John Harabedian is the new chair of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, which reviews audit recommendations. He called CBS News California’s findings a “wake-up call.” We hope he means it and will push his colleagues to act.

Californians deserve a Legislature that treats state audits as blueprints for action, not merely cover for when people complain. (“See, we looked into it.”) Auditors review the facts, speak to the experts and identify solutions. It is lawmakers’ job to make sure those solutions are implemented.

Written by the Press Democrat editorial board. ©2025 The Press Democrat.