California State Oversight and Waste

An exclusive CBS News California analysis of state audit reports dating back to 2015 finds that the California Legislature has failed to enact about three out of every four audit recommendations that required changes in state law, leaving more than 300 recommendations unresolved across 100‑plus agencies and issues. The outstanding items include repeated warnings about vulnerabilities that later produced multi‑billion‑dollar problems, such as at least $20 billion in pandemic unemployment fraud at the Employment Development Department and more than $20 billion in homelessness spending without a statewide plan, outcome tracking or uniform accountability standards. The report notes that many audit‑suggested fixes, requested and paid for by lawmakers, died behind closed doors without public votes, even where the auditor explicitly linked inaction to ongoing risks involving drinking‑water safety, wildfire exposure and public‑safety funding. In response, CBS is building a public "Audit Accountability Tracker" to let voters see which recommendations remain unaddressed and what those gaps are costing the state, highlighting a structural oversight failure in the country’s largest state budget. For national observers, the findings echo broader U.S. concerns about legislative follow‑through on watchdog reports and how much fraud and waste are tolerated before lawmakers move.