California Republicans dubbed it the high-speed rail "anti-transparency bill." A new watchdog report reveals why it isn't.
Late-night, luxury rides to nightclubs, gyms, a tiki bar, and an escape room, all paid for by California taxpayers. A new High-Speed Rail inspector general report found hundreds of thousands of dollars in wasteful and unallowable travel expenses, in some cases approved by the rail authority's CEO himself.
The public might not know any of this without a controversial new law that now requires the inspector general to publish full reports, but that also lets him temporarily withhold certain details.
CBS California's investigation spent months reviewing the controversial bill language, included in Assembly Bill 1608 and later enacted as part of the transportation budget trailer bill.
Critics are correct: The bill does create new confidentiality language.
Supporters are correct: The bill also creates first-of-their-kind public reporting requirements.
The question is not simply whether this is a transparency bill or an anti-transparency bill. The real question is: Does the bill's new reporting requirement outweigh the new power to temporarily withhold certain sensitive information?
The backstory
Ben Belnap is California's first inspector general dedicated solely to high-speed rail.
Before taking the job, he spent about two decades at the California State Auditor's Office. He is the kind of auditor who once built a board game to teach staff how to audit.
When Belnap and several longtime colleagues helped launch the new high-speed rail inspector general's office, they quickly identified gaps in the law that created it.
One of the biggest involved public reports.
State law required the office to publish an annual summary of its findings and recommendations. It did not require Belnap to publish every completed audit, review, or investigation.
Belnap chose to publish full reports anyway.
"I'm not really authorized by anything in state law to produce the reports I have been publishing," Belnap told CBS California Investigates.
He was not prohibited from publishing them. But nothing specifically allowed him to do it either.
"To the credit of the Newsom administration, they've not called me on that," he said.
The administration ultimately supported making those reports mandatory, incorporating the reporting language into a transportation budget trailer bill that fast-tracked the requirement into law.
That distinction matters in the consultant travel investigation.
Without the full 29-page investigative report, the public could have received little more than a summary of the findings and recommendations that wouldn't have been published until next year.
Instead, the report, published this month, lays out the destinations, expenses, approval problems, and internal decision-making behind the findings.
It also says a Legal Services contract manager told investigators the acting chief counsel directed her to approve travel that did not comply with requirements because High-Speed Rail CEO Ian Choudri had requested it.
Choudri has not publicly responded to the findings and did not respond to a request from CBS California.
That level of detail is precisely what the new law now requires future inspectors general to publish.
Notably, CBS California previously reported that Newsom's administration is threatening to veto a separate provision that the Inspector General calls "absolutely essential" for holding the High-Speed Rail Authority accountable, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions between the administration and the legislature.
Newsom has until Wednesday to sign or veto that bill.
ALSO READ: Will Gov. Newsom veto the high-speed rail oversight bill that his own watchdog calls essential?
Requiring full reports created a new question
While the first-of-their-kind new public reporting requirements are being called the gold standard for transparency, there's a catch.
If the state was going to require the inspector general to publish every completed report, lawmakers also had to decide what should happen when those reports contain information that could create a security risk, expose a whistleblower, or reveal a weakness in the state's fraud-detection systems.
The new law allows the inspector general to temporarily withhold a report, or part of one, if releasing it would reveal certain weaknesses that pose what the law calls a "substantial and articulable risk."
That includes information security, physical security, fraud-detection controls, and pending litigation.
Republicans raised concerns about that language while AB 1608 moved through the Legislature.
Assemblymember David Tangipa called it an "anti-transparency bill, painted as a transparency bill".
Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, in the same floor session, argued the bill would allow the majority party "to keep secrets on high speed rail."
Assemblymember Diane Dixon, also on the Assembly floor, called it an effort "to protect a failing project from public and legislative scrutiny."
The law does give the inspector general new statutory authority to temporarily withhold some information.
But that is only half of what the law does.
The First Amendment Coalition initially opposed it too
Republicans were not the only ones initially concerned about the confidentiality language.
The First Amendment Coalition, which advocates for government transparency and public access to records, initially opposed the proposal.
"I'll be honest," FAC's Ginny Lareau told CBS California Investigates. "We had some concerns."
FAC's concerns concerned Belnap too.
"It kind of weighed on me that we were on opposite sides of the table," he said. "We are both for transparency."
So instead of simply pushing forward, Belnap says he invited Lareau to the table.
Belnap recalled Lareau describing scenarios in which language he believed was narrow could be interpreted much more broadly.
"She's giving me scenarios of what it could mean, and I said, 'Oh, I don't intend that at all,'" he said.
Belnap says an unnamed Republican lawmaker also played a key role in developing some of the guardrails, even though she ultimately did not support the bill.
"I know she's gonna see this interview," Belnap said. "Shout out to her. She played a key role in that."
Belnap, Lareau, the Republican lawmaker and the office of Assembly Transportation Chair Lori Wilson, who authored the legislation, ultimately developed the framework now in law.
Lareau now says it "more properly balances the people's right to know with legitimate confidentiality needs."
The confidentiality comes with new guardrails
The inspector general cannot simply remove information from a report without telling anyone.
Under the new law, if information is withheld, the inspector general must publicly disclose that something was withheld and explain why.
The office must release any portions of the report that can reasonably be separated from the sensitive information.
The inspector general must reassess the withholding at least every 120 days.
And once the underlying risk is resolved, the information must be released.
That means the public may not immediately know exactly what was withheld, but it will know that something is missing and why.
Reporters, lawmakers and the public can then keep asking what is being withheld, whether the underlying problem has been fixed and when the information will be released.
That is significantly different from a system where information simply never appears in a public report.
Until now, the Inspector General could have legally withheld anything – indefinitely.
The latest investigation shows how the law could work
The consultant travel report provides a real-world example of why the Inspector General might need to withhold something.
If investigators discovered that High-Speed Rail could not detect fraudulent travel charges, publishing exactly how contractors could exploit that weakness before the authority fixed it could give other contractors instructions for defrauding the Authority.
Under the new law, the inspector general could temporarily withhold the details of that vulnerability.
But he would have to tell the public that information related to the weakness was being withheld, explain why, and revisit the decision at least every 120 days.
Once the vulnerability was fixed, the information would have to be released.
In reality, the Inspector General did not have to withhold any weakness related to this investigation.
Instead, the Inspector General's report indicates High-Speed Rail managers can – and did – identify many of the noncompliant expenses.
The report says a contract manager told investigators she was directed to approve unallowable travel despite the noncompliance because Choudri, the CEO, had requested it.
In other words, the report did not expose a hidden flaw that contractors could exploit. It exposed decisions surrounding expenses the authority was already capable of identifying.
And because the full report is public, taxpayers can see that distinction for themselves.
One Republican complaint is harder to dismiss
If the inspector general temporarily withholds part of a report, the confidential information may be shared with certain officials, including the governor and the "chairs" of the Assembly and Senate transportation committees.
That matters politically in California. Democrats control both houses of the Legislature, so committee chairs are generally Democrats. The law does not require sharing confidential information with the committee vice chairs, who are generally Republicans.
Sen. Tony Strickland, the Republican vice chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, raised that concern during a legislative hearing: "If it was truly transparent, wouldn't you want the vice chairs of these committees... to be notified on all this information?"
Asm. Wilson, the author of the bill, noted that the listed officials are people who "may" receive confidential information. The inspector general does not automatically send every withheld report to the transportation committee chairs.
"The vice chairs do not have that responsibility," Wilson told CBS California Investigates. "They're not in charge of negotiating bills."
Belnap told CBS California Investigates he did not write that part of the legislation.
"That decision was made by the author of the bill based on weighing a variety of factors," he said.
And regardless of which official receives the confidential information, the inspector general must still tell the public that something was withheld, explain the reason, and revisit the withholding every 120 days.
Other criticisms worth noting
The law protects certain investigative files and work product from automatic release, meaning not every piece of evidence collected during an investigation will become public. That is a common provision for inspectors general across the country.
However, California's new law also gives the Inspector General authority to publicly release findings when appropriate. It also does not prohibit the Inspector General from releasing substantiated findings or supporting evidence. That distinction matters.
Critics also argue the word "weaknesses" is broad. The law allows the IG to withhold information that would reveal weaknesses, including security problems, fraud-detection controls or pending litigation that pose a substantial risk.
That gives the inspector general some discretion beyond narrowly defined security information.
But the law also requires the IG to release segregable portions, publicly explain what is being withheld, and reassess the decision every 120 days.
That is the real transparency debate: not whether the law allows some confidentiality. It does.
The question is whether those limits, paired with mandatory full reports and public disclosure of what is withheld, ultimately give taxpayers more or less information.
Until now, the IG could effectively withhold anything they wanted, indefinitely.
The first major test produced more information, not less
The first major investigation published under the new framework offers an early answer.
The public received a detailed report documenting travel expenses, internal approval problems and the inspector general's findings.
Under the prior law, the office could have satisfied its statutory reporting obligation with an annual summary.
That no longer depends on the discretion of whoever occupies the inspector general's office.
Future inspectors general must publish their completed reports, and if they withhold part of one, the public will know.
The consultant travel investigation does not prove that a future inspector general could never misuse the confidentiality provision.
No law can guarantee how every future officeholder will exercise discretion, but it does demonstrate something concrete about the law Republicans dubbed "anti-transparency":
The first major report published under it gave Californians substantially more information than state law previously required.
More to come
CBS California Investigates is still waiting for the records behind the inspector general's findings.
We requested the invoices, receipts, rideshare records, travel approvals and related correspondence for key contractors, along with emails referenced in the inspector general's report about advance approval for consultant travel.
High-Speed Rail waited until the end of its initial 10-day response period, then invoked an additional 14-day extension. The authority now says it will make a determination by Oct. 12 on whether it will produce the records.
We'll update this investigation when those records arrive.
