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California State Auditor Logo COMMITMENT • INTEGRITY • LEADERSHIP

Investigation of Improper Activities by State Agencies and Employees
Waste of State Funds, Misuse of Bereavement Leave, Misuse of State Resources,
Dishonesty, and Supervisory Neglect of Duty

Report Number: I2020-1

Introduction

Under the California Whistleblower Protection Act (Whistleblower Act), anyone who in good faith reports an improper governmental activity is a whistleblower and is protected from retaliation.
The Whistleblower Act can be found in its entirety in Government Code sections 8547 through 8547.15. It is available online at http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.

An improper governmental activity is any action by a state agency or by a state employee performing official duties that does the following:

Whistleblowers are critical to ensuring government accountability and public safety. The California State Auditor (State Auditor) protects whistleblowers' identities to the maximum extent allowed by law. Retaliation against state employees who file reports is unlawful and may result in monetary penalties and imprisonment.

Ways That Whistleblowers Can Report Improper Governmental Activities

Individuals can report suspected improper governmental activities through the toll-free Whistleblower Hotline (hotline) at (800) 952‑5665, by fax at (916) 322-2603, by U.S. mail, or through our website at www.auditor.ca.gov/contactus/complaint.

We received 1,418 calls and inquiries from January 1, 2019, through December 31, 2019. Of these, 779 came through our website, 422 through the mail, 178 through the hotline, 36 through fax, two through internal sources, and one through an individual who visited our office. In addition, our office received hundreds of allegations that fell outside of our jurisdiction; when possible, we referred those complainants to the appropriate federal, local, or state agencies.

Investigation of Whistleblower Allegations

The Whistleblower Act authorizes our office, as the recipient of whistleblower allegations, to investigate and, when appropriate, report on substantiated improper governmental activity by state agencies and state employees. We may conduct investigations independently, or we may request assistance from or elect to have other state agencies perform confidential investigations under our supervision. Over the past 25 years, our investigative work has identified and made recommendations to remediate a total of $579.9 million in state spending resulting from improper governmental activities such as gross inefficiency, theft of state property, conflicts of interest, and personal use of state resources.

During the one-year period covered by this report, we conducted investigative work on 1,645 cases that we opened either in previous periods or in the current period. As Figure 1 shows, 1,172 of the 1,645 cases lacked sufficient information for investigation or are pending preliminary review. For another 299 cases, we conducted work or will conduct additional work—such as analyzing available evidence and contacting witnesses—to assess the allegations. We notified the respective agencies for an additional 89 cases so they could investigate the matters further, and we independently initiated investigations for another 34 cases. Further, we requested that state agencies gather information for 51 cases to assist us in assessing the validity of the allegations. Some of these cases may still be ongoing.

Figure 1
Status of 1,645 Cases, January 2019 Through December 2019

A pie chart showing the breakdown of what we did with the 1,645 cases we received in 2019.

Source: State Auditor.

For information about the corrective actions taken in response to our investigations program, please refer to the Appendix.






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