State Lawmakers Release Office Spending Budgets

Weeks after the Los Angeles Times and The Sacramento Bee filed a lawsuit against the California State Assembly to compel public disclosure of current office budget and spending records, the Senate and Assembly has released member-by-member spending records.

Friday's release - which shows the total expenditure of Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada) from the past eight months to be the highest in the Assembly - follows that would force the Legislature to open its books.

"If these documents were not posted on the Assembly’s web page, I would think they were an April fool’s joke,'' Portantino said in a prepared statement.

"The documents released hide true and accurate accounting of staff budgets and complete staff expenditures. I once again implore Assembly leaders to come clean and open the Assembly to true transparency. The documents released today are an insult to the public.”

Portantino and Assembly Speaker John Perez have at each other since Portantino . Democratic party leaders slashed Portantino's budget and issued furlough notices for his staff. 

In an interview with the , Perez's press secretary John Vigna said, “The fact is that we have released every penny spent by the Assembly for last year and this year up to July.

“Mr. Portantino has been grandstanding throughout this whole event, and now he’s acting like Donald Trump acted when the president’s birth certificate got released.”

Assemblyman Tim Donnelly was one of the state lawmakers who released his office budget to the Associated Press, according to the Pasadena Star News.

Donnelly, whose expenditures are listed at $127,349.09 according Assembly and Senate list, said the amount of uncontrolled Assembly spending would shock voters.

"They are obfuscating the budget," he told the Star News. "There's examples of them spending $150,000 a year on a committee budget for a committee that never meets, and yet there's three or four staffers and a field rep on the payroll. Why does a committee that never meets need a field rep?"

You may find the Assembly's 2010 spending here and the 2011 year-to-date spending here.