By Katy Grimes

SACRAMENTO — It has never been more apparent that unelected state bureaucrats are also unaccountable to the Legislature. I attend legislative committee hearings every week, and despite the questions from lawmakers, the bureaucrats obfuscate, and get away with it.

High-speed rail is the most blatant example of this. Every hearing in which High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Jeff Morales has testified, leaves lawmakers shaking their heads because of his bureaucrat-speak — there are rarely answers to lawmakers’ questions.

And state bureaucrats get away with this.

A new Sheriff in town

The friendly, kind, portly bearded man who sat in the last row of the Assembly for six years is now in the Senate. Sen. Jim Beall may be kind and friendly, but Thursday he handed state bureaucrats their behinds. And it was a beautiful thing.

Used to speaking in circles at committee hearings, these bureaucrats, from the state Natural Resources agency, the troubled Parks and Recreation department, and the governor’s Department of Finance, didn’t know what hit them. It was as if Santa Clause had gone rogue.

Beall, a Democrat from San Jose, knows his way around a hearing room. He’s been a politician since he cut his teeth on the San Jose City Council, 1980 – 1994, as a county supervisor 1994 – 2006, and the Assembly 2006 – 2012.

The hearing was the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, Subcommittee No. 2 on Resources, Environmental Protection, Energy and Transportation, and Beall made it very clear, politely, that he intended to get answers to his budget questions.

Troubled Parks Department appears still troubled

“The Parks and Recreation situation… what has taken place, since some of the funds have several problems?” Beall asked Farra Bracht with the Legislative Anakyst’s Office. Bracht explained the Dpartment of Finance went through all of the other special funds in the state, and matched them up with totals with what the Controller has.

“Regardless of the size of the fund, we need to make sure all of it is accounted for so we don’t get caught not accounting for it,” Beall said. “They are taxpayers funds.”

“This makes me nervous being chairman of the committee,” Beall said of the many special fund accounts in the state. “And when I am nervous, I do things.”

“A good starting point is to ask the Department of Finance what they are doing about it on an ongoing basis,” Bracht said.

Parks and Recreation scandal

While the State Parks and Recreation department was soliciting private donations to keep 70 state parks open, top agency employees were bilking the state for large vacation pay buyouts, and $54 million sat in a special fund, unreported.

Beall was relentless.

John Laird, the Secretary for the Natural Resources agency was unable to be at the hearing. Laird sent an Assistant Secretary for the agency in his place. But he mumbled his name, and no one asked him to identify himself again.  It was apparent Laird knew exactly which bureaucrat to send in his place if there was to be a grilling.

Kemp tried to quickly move away from the Parks and Rec scandal, but Beall instead asked him about the special funds. Kemp deferred to the Department of Finance.

And this is where the boring but masterful doublespeak and obfuscation began.

The Department of Finance said they were fully concerned with the problem, had done an extensive review of all special funds in the state treasury, and were satisfied there are no other cases of misrepresentation.

Beall asked about special funds not accounted for inside of the state treasury.

“We’re trying to determine the best way to do that, the best solution that satisfies everybody,” the finance representative said.

“You comments are so vague,” Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, added. “Your comments give me no comfort.”

“Our job is to make things work correctly  — we will do that,” Beall said.

Beall and Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, asked Kemp to let them know specifically, the information needed to deal appropriately with special fund issues. They each made it very clear that neither of them was going to be happy with surprises.

“What do we do to help you in working together, so we govern responsible,” Jackson asked.

“Be as open and transparent as possible,” the Natural Resources Assistant Secretary said. “So when we sit down and talk, we communicate openly.”

Clearly frustrated, Jackson said, “I guess that’s as good as I’m going to get today.”

By John Seiler

Last year Californians discovered their state parks were mismanaged. While shutting parks supposedly because of a lack of money, it turned out they had a $54 million surplus squirreled away.

Given the billions of dollars voters have approved for state bonds for parks and last year’s massive park fee increase, the parks should be overflowing with money. What happened? A new audit by state Auditor Elaine Howle has the details:

“For years the department has continually reported different fund balance amounts to the Department of Finance (Finance) than it reported to the State Controller’s Office (State Controller) for both the parks fund and the off-highway vehicle fund.”

If any private company did that, its officers would go to prison under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

“Correspondence we reviewed in the department’s accounting and budget files show that Finance informed the department that differences existed between the amounts reported in the governor’s budget and those provided in the State Controller’s budgetary report as early as April 1999, yet neither current staff nor documentation we reviewed in the accounting and budget files at the department supplied an explanation regarding what originally caused the differences or why the issue was not resolved until the fall of 2012.”

So the parks’ fiscal malfeasance has lasted at least 14 years, through four governorships, before it was revealed.

“Over the years, various individuals at the department became aware of the differences in the amounts being reported. According to the current accounting administrator, approximately one year after she became aware of reporting differences in 2002, she was directed by the accounting administrator at the time to begin preparing fund condition statements—which show revenues, expenditures, prior-year adjustments, transfers, and fund balances—and providing them to the department’s budget office. However, she stated that the department’s budget office continued to report its own amounts and that over the next six years three different budget officers, including the current one, came to her with concerns about the differences in reporting. “

They just don’t care about the money!

The auditor made numerous suggestions, which the parks people and the state Department of Finance accepted.

But the real solution is privatization. Turn all the state parks over to private companies, such as Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm and Magic Mountain. Let the companies make some money and the costs will go down and the service up.

Instead of park bonds paid for with massive tax increases, the private companies would raise private capital to fund improvements. Best of all, state taxpayers would not be on the hook for park employees’ pensions. The private companies would offer private pension programs, such as 401(k)s.

Let Disneyland — the “Happiest Place on Earth” — turn California’s badly run parks into the happiest parks on earth.

By Katy Grimes

The crime is one thing — the cover up makes it worse. But in the case of the state Parks and Recreation agency, it could be that the lack of prosecution of the crime is the real crime.

Late in the day on Thursday, the Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully announced she would not pursue criminal charges against California state parks officials “because of a ‘failure to identify any crime’ by the state attorney general.”

“At the outset, we note that both the reason and the basis for referral to our office is unclear,” Scully said in a letter to Deputy Attorney General, Michael Farrell. “There is no indication who your office considers to be suspects, and if so, what crime they may have committed.”

If the DA can’t identify who committed the acts of fraud and covered up the millions, did the Attorney General’s office even do their job?

Attorney General does incomplete investigation

“The Attorney General’s Office in this instance clearly asserted that authority when it assigned a deputy attorney general to question individuals regarding the unreported funds.  It is thus unclear why the matter has been referred to our office at all, and whether your office intends to retain its historic authority in the prosecution (if that be warranted here) of such cases,” Scully said.

“The referral to us contains only transcripts of some of the witness interviews; not the final report (apparently for reasons discussed below), and no supporting or related documentation.”

Scully continued: “Second, the investigation was not conducted in a manner consistent with or conducive to its use for criminal evaluation purposes.  Specifically, the investigation consisted of the interview of 40 current or former state employees.1

“Thus, your referral package to us does not include the compelled statements.  Still, it does not appear that any effort was made in this process to identify and differentiate potential targets or defendants from mere witnesses, nor to assure that statements taken from targets did not serve as the basis for developing further information as the investigation progressed, nor to meaningfully segregate out any such ‘product’ information.”

The Attorney General’s office handed the DA an incomplete file, and never bothered to identify who the perpetrators were.

Ironic crime

While the State Parks and Recreation department, under agency Director Ruth Coleman’s leadership, had been soliciting private donations to keep state parks open, top agency employees were bilking the state for vacation pay buyouts, and covering up a stash of cash totaling more than $54 million.

I wrote about the illegal vacation buyout scandal in the State Parks and Recreation agency in “Scandalous state parks department needs privatization.” I questioned who it was that authorized the checks that were paid to the parks employees, and said that everyone involved should be brought up on charges.

It doesn’t take an Attorney General to peel back the layers of this onion. So was this negligence or another deliberate cover up by the AG?

The scam(s)

The scam goes like this: In the past, state employees have been allowed to sell unused vacation time back to the state for cash payouts. But these employees hadn’t received the proper authority to do this from the California Department of Human Resources.

They did it anyway, and someone at the state approved the checks cashing out the vacation time.

The allegations of stashed $54 million have greatly upset the many groups that worked tirelessly with state and local officials to try and save these parks. The discovery that the budget situation wasn’t as they were told merely added insult to injury. A quarter-cent sales tax measure in Sonoma County was even recently shelved in light of the secret special fund discovery.

“The alleged multiyear misreporting by DPR officials of tens of millions of dollars of fund balances in Governor’s Budget documents is unacceptable,” the Legislative Analyst Office stated in a recent report about the ongoing special funds issue. “The Legislature must be able to rely on the accuracy of such budget documents, which are an important part of the annual decision making process.”

Statewide, park volunteers, donors and non-profit organizations entered into public-private partnerships to save the parks.  They raised funds, donated their time, and performed maintenance on state parks.

During this time of crisis, the Parks Department Director Ruth Coleman testified to the Legislature about the need to close the 70 parks and lay off agency staff. She has since resigned, and placed the blame on senior administrative employees, while insisting that she did not know about the secret special funds accounts or the vacation buyout scandal.

But as I wrote in “State Parks Director: Negligent or Incompetent?,” there are numerous current and former Parks Department employees who claim that Coleman knew about the special fund accounts, and knew about the vacation buyout scheme. The Parks and Recreation Department scandals were common knowledge in some state government circles.

 ‘Special funds’

The state has more than 500 “special” funds, which are funded through fees that we all pay for services, schools, environmental issues, on products, in our utility bills, and at the checkout counter at many stores.

These special funds were ostensibly created to help pay for specific programs. However, with the spotlight on the Department of Parks and Recreation’s two secret special fund accounts, which the Department of Finance and State Controller insisted they had no idea existed, it is clear that investigations and audits into these funds are desperately needed, as well as the other 570 special funds.

DA tosses case back to Attorney General

After the AG punted the incomplete case to the Sacramento DA, with little or no information, , the DA obviously had no choice other than to toss the case right back.

“If your office conducts a criminal investigation and then determines that it appears a crime has been committed, that a specific suspect or suspects are identified as having committed the crime, and that the case can be proved without Lybarger information (or its product) from the target suspect(s), our office will then consider whether it is proper to file the charges and issue the warrants that you request,” the DA said.

Case closed on one of the biggest scams in California state government?

read Scully’s letter here

By Mark Landsbaum

On Nov. 6, Californians voted to raise taxes, but weren’t told the whole story. They repeatedly were told their state government was frugal to the point of pain, yet still in dire need of more tax money.

They were not told nearly as often that California state government spending has swollen like an infected boil, even as those doing the spending plead poverty.

If voters had been more aware of the full scope of the state’s spending spree, would the tax increases have had a chance? Or did they give the government the benefit of the doubt and swallow the line about trusted public servants with barely enough cash to scrape by?

The $6 billion a year tax from Gov. Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30 will increase income taxes substantially for people earning more than $250,000 a year, and increase the nation’s highest state sales tax by another quarter cent.

The entire justification for tax increases was that the state government has in good faith made deep spending cuts, reducing general fund expenditures from a high of $102 billion in fiscal 2007-08 to a mere $91.3 billion in 2012-13. Frugality, the reasoning goes, deserves to be rewarded by giving Sacramento more money to spend.

But how frugal is state government, really? And how aware of that is the public?

The $91.3 billion spent in the general fund is only part of the story. There is another $39.4 billion spent on “special funds,” ostensibly for dedicated purposes such as harbors and watercraft and beverage container recycling. Special fund spending has more than doubled in 10 years. It increased 116 percent during that period, while general fund spending increased 18 percent. That is hardly a picture of frugality. How much did voters hear about that before casting ballots?

Special funds receive far less scrutiny than the general fund, so much so that nearly $54 million in two Department of Parks and Recreation special funds was discovered after having “been deliberately hidden from the governor’s budget office,” AP reported. On top of that, the state controller’s office and the Department of Finance separately tallied the special funds and came up with totals $2.3 billion apart. Who is watching the store?

Had the press devoted as many column inches and televised minutes to Sacramento’s profligate spending and untrustworthy accounting, would voters have been as willing to increase their taxes? How different might it have been if campaign advertising had stressed the imprudence of turning over more money to a state government that purposely hides millions in secret accounts, and apparently can’t even accurately add up billions in special funds in a way that balances the books?

We are assured, of course, that the state has top people sorting all this out and the 570 special funds that are set apart from the general fund will be more accountable and transparent in the future. But the balloting is over and the higher taxes are approved.

No system

“The Department of Finance presently has no system in place to track how approximately $3.7 billion in special funds are spent by various state departments and agencies,” the California Budget
Fact Check reported over the summer.  The California Legislative Analyst also complained that Legislators “must be able to rely on the accuracy” of budget documents, the implication being they could not.

Former Republican state Sen. Ray Haynes described the special funds as “basically slush funds for the bureaucracy to play with. “Elected and appointed politicians are too lazy, too stupid, or too busy to look into these funds, and the permanent bureaucracy counts on this to avoid scrutiny of how they spend the money in these funds. State government doesn’t need more money, it needs political leaders who will do their job of controlling the bureaucracy, rather than being an apologist for it.”

Spending problem

This is an echo of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s laudable proclamation that California doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. That was before Schwarzenegger flip-flopped on that concept and dipped into special funds to “borrow” $350 million to create a one-time spending benefit for the general fund in 2009. He took cash from five special funds supposedly restricted to dedicated purposes, which demonstrated how fungible cash is once it’s deposited in any government account.

The Sacramento Bee shed light on how deceptive it can be to limit the state’s budget discussion to the general fund. “The best example of why the general fund total can be misleading,” the Bee reported earlier this year, “is Brown’s ‘realignment’ of nearly $6 billion in former state general fund programs to local governments. To shift those responsibilities, the state last year created new special fund accounts.”

In short, general fund spending was disguised as special fund spending, and the governor claimed to have cut general fund expenditures. This shell game wasn’t explained in the  ballot language for Prop. 30.

The Bee noted, “[B]udget writers also have relied on creative revenue streams and accounting maneuvers to move programs off the general fund books rather than cut them.” If voters have difficulty following the fiscal shell game, they are in good company. “Frankly, it’s so complex that it defies easy description,” commented a deputy at the LAO.

Prop. 30 proponents pleaded for higher taxes to restore spending that had been cut from education. But it’s worth noting that, under the convoluted formula used to calculate how much schools receive, the shifting of general fund responsibilities to special funds effectively “reduced the amount the state owed K-12 schools and community colleges by $2.1 billion,” the Bee reported.

Perspective

Now for some perspective, also largely absent in November’s tax campaign. Combined general fund and special fund spending increased from $95.7 billion in 2002-03 to $130.7 billion in 2012-13. That’s a 36 percent increase in overall spending.

But that’s not all. After adding in spending for bonds and money channeled to Sacramento from Washington D.C., total state spending soared from $161.5 billion 10 years ago, to $225.3 billion in the current fiscal year. That’s a 39.5 percent jump.

The boasts of spending cuts and cries of poverty seem hollow when total state government expenditures have grown by 39.5 percent. Does this meet anyone’s standard for frugality?

The state’s dire fiscal woes haven’t prevented elected officials from pushing ahead with an unneeded high-speed rail project that has variously been estimated to cost anywhere from $68 billion to $100 billion-plus, and which will drain the general fund of hundreds of millions a year to pay off its bonds.

Then there is this: the current budget “increased spending by 6 percent this year over last year — a remarkable feat in this sour economy,” as the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association’s Jon Coupal put it. And despite threats to drastically cut education if Prop. 30 had been defeated, Coupal noted the proposition contains no language requiring such cuts, and “the governor and the Legislature can immediately go back in and fully fund education.”

Next time voters are asked to raise taxes, they ought to factor in not just the bullying threats to cut schools funding, but also the deceitful claims of poverty and deceptive manipulation of finances.

That kind of disingenuous behavior also throws a different light on Sacramento’s age-old problem of rosy revenue forecasts that always seem to fall short. At best that’s ineptitude. At worst…?

How much should voters trust politicians who repeatedly approve budgets based on inflated revenue estimates that don’t materialize? Shouldn’t Sacramento err on the conservative side, rather than imprudently expect money that year after year doesn’t show up?

Brown had difficulty branding Prop. 30, which alternately was advanced to balance the budget, to restore education cuts, to create jobs (government jobs, of course) and even to boost businesses (after all, school children grow up to be adult employees).

Was all of this incompetence? Or something worse? Is there anything about this scenario that should have persuaded voters to tax themselves more to send Sacramento more money to shuffle among its myriad funds? Will voters get the full story next time?

Mark Landsbaum is an editorial writer at the Orange County Register.

By Katy Grimes

The recent blockbuster news that the California Department of Parks and Recreation has squirreled away $54 million in special funds over the last 12 years has caused the California Legislature to jump on board the bandwagon and take a bigger roll in oversight.

The state has more than 500 “special” funds, which are funded through fees that we all pay for services, schools, environmental issues, on products, in our utility bills, and at the checkout counter at many stores.

These special funds were ostensibly created to help pay for specific programs. However, with the spotlight now on the Department of Parks and Recreation’s two secret special fund accounts, which the Department of Finance and State Controller insist they had no idea existed, many are demanding investigations and audits into these funds, as well as the other 570 special funds.

Legislators want to know who at the state knew about these funds, and when they knew it.

What happened?

The discovery of the $54 million Parks Department stash has many asking about other state agencies which have similar secret fund accounts, and whether the latest round of budget cuts and tax increase threats by the governor was just more partisan political drama.

Assembly Republicans submitted a request to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee last week, asking the nonpartisan State Auditor to delve into how state agency departments are spending special fund dollars.  The request was approved, and the state Auditor estimated that it will likely take six months before the department has an answer.

The discovery that at the same time the Parks department was hiding money, and was insisting that the Legislature approve the closure of 70 state parks because of a severe budget shortfall, has legislators up in arms. It was business as usual even when there were numerous state employees within the parks agency who knew about the $54 million in secret special fund accounts, and say that this was reported to state officials.

A ‘grave breach of trust’

Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, expressed her dismay at the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee hearing Wednesday. “To have gone through the whole budget process with people in the (Brown) administration knowing, is a grave breach of trust,” Evans said. “I wrote many letters to the parks director about park closures. Hundreds, thousands of people donated. As a sitting senator, I feel betrayed.”

Evans told about the “Sustainable Parks Proposal” that she and Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, initiatied in order to try to save parks from closure to provide assistance to non-profit partners, and find  “new ways of working” in the parks, including allowing parks to become more entrepreneurial and allowing more personnel flexibility.

Evans said that she and Simitian requested some money from a special fund to help with this, “but the Governor vetoed our special funds request, even when he knew about the extent — people in the administration knew.”

Who knew, and when did they know it?

“I need to know when did they know and why weren’t we told,” Evans told State Finance Director Ana Matosantos.

“Within 48 hours of hearing about this, the administration took action,” Matosantos replied. She repeated this statement at least five times during the course of the four hour hearing.

“Are you telling me that the administration did not know about it until July?” Evans asked.

“I am telling you that we took action within 48 hours,” Matosantos replied.

“The Department of Finance did not know about this?” Evans asked.

“Correct,” Matosantos said.

Matosantos repeatedly said that, as soon as the governor knew about the parks department scandal, he launched investigations and audits, and made changes within the parks department.

With all of the effectiveness of an internal audit, sometime during 2003 the state’s top finance officials decided to allow state agencies to reconcile their own special funds.

It became apparent during the hearing that the State Controller’s office and the Department of Finance had shirked responsibility for the reconciliation of the numerous special fund accounts by giving the responsibility back to the agencies responsible for the funds.

There was no explanation provided for this change.

Simitian reminded everyone at the hearing that the Legislature had built the most recent parks budget “on assurances from the parks department staff and the Brown administration. “We’ve never had to question the substance of the information from the Department of Finance,” Simitian said. “The public has little confidence that their money is well spent at any level of government.”

The Parks Department scandal

While California has been preparing to close 70 state parks this year, senior Parks Department employees were taking unauthorized, large vacation buyouts.

Statewide, park volunteers, donors and non-profit organizations entered into public-private partnerships to save the parks.  They raised funds, donated their time, and performed maintenance on state parks.

During this time of crisis, the Parks Department Director Ruth Coleman testified to the Legislature about the need to close the 70 parks and lay off agency staff. She has since resigned, and placed the blame on senior administrative employees, while insisting that she did not know about the secret special funds accounts or the vacation buyout scandal.

But as I wrote in “State Parks Director: Negligent or Incompetent?,” there are numerous current and former Parks Department employees who claim that Coleman knew about the special fund accounts, and knew about the vacation buyout scheme. The Parks and Recreation Department scandals were common knowledge in some state government circles.

Money stashes

The allegations of stashed money have greatly upset the many groups that worked tirelessly with state and local officials to try and save these parks. The discovery that the budget situation wasn’t as they were told merely added insult to injury. A quarter-cent sales tax measure in Sonoma County was even recently shelved in light of the secret special fund discovery.

“The alleged multiyear misreporting by DPR officials of tens of millions of dollars of fund balances in Governor’s Budget documents is unacceptable,” the Legislative Analyst Office stated in a recent report about the ongoing special funds issue. “The Legislature must be able to rely on the accuracy of such budget documents, which are an important part of the annual decision making process.”

That’s ‘billion,’ with a “B”

“The Department of Finance presently has no system in place to track how approximately $3.7 billion in special funds are spent by various state departments and agencies,” the California Budget Fact Check reports. “Right now, there are 570 ‘special fund’ accounts in state government. There are few, if any, controls in place to match how departments are spending money with how much money is in the account.”

It quickly became clear at the hearing that no one really wants to accept accountability for the money tied up in special fund accounts.

The Department of Finance said affirmatively that the special funds total $3.7 billion. Yet, the San Jose Mercury News found that bookkeeping for all state departments was off by more than $2 billion.

After accounting for encumbered funds and accounting changes, the Finance Department acknowledged a net $415 million in “found” money.

Overall, it is evident that with the money in these special fund accounts, the budget cuts and tax increases that Gov. Jerry Brown has been touting in his “honest but painful budget” may not have been quite as necessary as he has often repeated.

Sloppy accounting, bad reporting

LAO analyst Jason Sisney told the committee that the Parks department situation is “unacceptable” but isolated. Sisney also said that discrepancies in other special fund accounts discovered in an audit last week, were a result of “sloppiness” and “confusion.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that administration officials found $232.6 million “that went unreported to lawmakers and administration officials while they were hashing out the state budget. Officials blamed errors, including typos, miscalculations and omissions.”

Sen. Bill Emmerson, R-Hemet, said that he had asked the former Parks Department employees to appear at the Wednesday hearing because he felt they should be present to answer to the Legislature, but the justice department intervened because of the ongoing investigation, and said that their appearance would not be possible.

“Not only did the (Brown) administration know,” Emmerson said, “the Attorney General’s office knew about the money in the funds.”  Emmerson also questioned the Attorney General’s involvement in performing the investigation, “since they withheld the information from the legislature.”

“Either we have to fire all of the auditors, or we have some employees who took advantage of a set of untimely audits,” Sen. Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield said.

Fuller asked when the full investigation documents would be released, instead of the 70 pages of redacted documents she received. The Attorney General’s representative said that it would be a couple of months before the investigation would be completed.

There were no answers provided at the hearing by Matosantos, the Attorney General’s office, or the Controller’s office.  “Do we have to assume that this is not happening in other departments?” Emmerson asked.

“Hiding information is a recurring theme,” Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Roseville, said.

“In the last 10 years, special funds more than doubled from $18 billion, to $49 billion. And over this period, the state has transferred over $1 billion to the general fund,” Emmerson said. “Why didn’t we reduce the fees and return the funds to the fee payers?”

Emmerson asked Matosantos one more time when the Brown administration and Attorney General knew about the special funds at the Parks Department. “Within 48 hours we acted on it,” Matosantos said once again. “Once the audit is done we will know specifically, and it will be available.”

There is no doubt that this investigation will conclude long after the November election has passed, and much of the historical knowledge of this latest scandal is termed out along with legislators.

By Joseph Perkins

A pair of Northern California lawmakers unveiled a proposal this week to avert the scheduled July 1 closure of 70 state’s 278 parks, casualties of last year’s budget-cutting by the Legislature.

“The notion of closing 70 parks is ill-conceived,” said state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto. “The state has never closed a state park, not even during the Great Depression,” said state Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa.

The lawmakers say their so-called “Sustainable Parks Proposal” would keep the gates open at up to 50 of the parks this year — those that have not already been spared by takeover by the U.S. Forest Service, transfer to a non-profit organization or funding by a wealthy donor.

To pay for their proposal, which was heard Wednesday by a Senate budget subcommittee, Simitian and Evans propose to tap the state’s Clean Water Revolving Loan Fund, Motor Vehicle Account and Local Assistance Fund, none of which are supposed to be used for parks.

But there’s a better way for lawmakers to save the parks without robbing Peter to pay Paul: Privatize them.

Just last month, the state Legislative Analyst’s Office issued a report in which it recommended that private for-profit companies be allowed to operate at least some state parks.

The LAO estimated that privatization would yield the state government annual savings in the low tens of millions of dollars. Another dividend, the report noted, is that private companies would procure new equipment and implement new projects more quickly than the state.

That matters not to Sens. Simitian and Evans. They continue to press ahead with their “Sustainable Parks” plan, which would have the budget-constrained state government continue to spend money it doesn’t have to maintain operations at all 278 state parks.

“Once you privatize a park,” said Evans, in remarks published in the Huffington Post, “you change the essential mission of the park. It becomes about making a profit.”

But the state Department of Parks and Recreation, itself, sees things differently.

“There are private companies in the Parks and Rec business that do it well,” DPR Deputy Director Roy Stearns told the Post. “People shouldn’t see private enterprise as a dirty word.”

In fact, DPR currently has about 200 concession contracts with private corporations, partnerships, associations and individuals that generate $12.5 million a year in state revenue.

The contractors provide a range of park amenities, including food service, recreational gear rentals, retail shopping, golf courses, marinas and lodging.

The state park system’s 70 million annual visitors are quite pleased with the quality and price of services and amenities provided by private concessionaires. There’s little reason to think they would be any less pleased if they visited state parks fully operated by private sector.