The State Controller’s Office violated teleworking and salary overpayment laws, according to a new audit, providing fresh fodder for critics of Controller Malia Cohen, who is running for a second term in the Nov. 3 election.
Two employees at the controller’s office teleworked from Idaho, Tennessee and Alabama in violation of state law, the audit found.
The findings included in a report by the State Auditor’s Office published last week detail cases of waste, inefficiency, misuse of state resources, contracting violations and “other improper governmental activities” across various state agencies investigated within a yearlong period.
Two unnamed employees with “staff services manager” titles at the controller’s office were found to have been living out of state, despite the state’s human resources department issuing a notice in early 2022 that employees’ requests to regularly telework from outside of California would not be approved.
One employee had been working and living in Idaho since late 2020 without disclosing that information to the agency, according to IP address records examined by the state auditor. The audit also reviewed public records showing the employee owned property in Idaho and was the holder of an Idaho-issued driver’s license.
“When we interviewed Manager A, he admitted to working from Idaho ‘just about every day’ for about five years,” the audit said.
Some teleworking is allowed, but employees must be working in a location from which they are able to easily return to their assigned work location within normal commute time, the audit said. And the telework policy is only available to employees who actively reside in California.
In telework plans signed over several years, the employee submitted a California address, which he explained later had belonged to a family member. He had not disclosed his real address to his supervisor out of fear of losing his job, the audit said.
The controller’s office is responsible for the accounting and disbursement of the state’s financial resources.
The second employee’s IP address log-in data showed that the employee accessed the internet from Alabama for several months in the latter half of 2025. She also sometimes logged in from Tennessee, the audit said.
The audit found that in an email last year, she said she planned to move to Alabama. In an interview with auditors she maintained she lived in California, although said she sometimes worked from Alabama and Tennessee. The audit found her explanation “not credible.”
The audit said, however, that much of the telework policy was not made clear to workers, and recommended the agency clarify obligations and bring the employees into compliance with rules. It also recommended some sort of disciplinary or corrective action. The audit said both employees had since left the controller’s office, but did not say whether it was the result of such action.
The audit also found two controller’s office employees received $33,000 in salary overpayment, but the office took more than a year to try and claw back the funds.
One employee ultimately reached an agreement over the payment, but the controller’s office never resolved the situation with the other employee, violating state law.
At the same time, officials in the office debated filing a claim against the state to argue that the overpayments were not the fault of the employees, according to the audit.
Herb Morgan, a Republican from San Diego who is running against Cohen in next month’s election, blasted Cohen’s office over the findings.
“The office that is supposed to guard the public’s money could not collect what it had already handed out, and its answer was to look for a way to hand out more,” he said. “That is not oversight. That is the problem.”
A spokesperson for Cohen’s office said the office implemented the auditor’s recommendations prior to the release of the report.
The office “takes seriously its responsibility to protect public funds and hold itself to the standards of accountability it promotes across state government,” the spokesperson said.
With respect to the overpayments, the second employee is now in a repayment plan, according to the spokesperson. As for the out-of-state workers, they did not disclose their actual work locations and instead listed California addresses, limiting the office’s ability to identify the issue sooner, the spokesperson said.
In another case, the audit found that a high-ranking law enforcement officer misused confidential databases to look up family members and other employees without legitimate business purposes. It did not name the state agency employing the accused high-ranking law enforcement officer because doing so could lead to identities being revealed.
The audit described the officer searching for the home address and vehicle information of six other employees. He searched for information about a deputy district attorney, a local county supervisor, and others in law enforcement without any “identifiable business need,” the audit said.
He looked up data related to more than 60 vehicles listed online for sale, and a family member of his later purchased one of them.
The officer told the investigator that he did several searches out of personal curiosity, but said home addresses and vehicle information for the other employees were part of threat assessments. However, investigators did not find any documentation of any such threat assessments.
The audit said the state agency’s leadership disciplined the officer but did not provide any details. His case was also shared with the local district attorney, who has the authority to prosecute misuse of confidential governmental data, but the district attorney declined to pursue criminal charges, the audit said.
Nine cases total were detailed in the audit. The state auditor’s office said the cases do not represent a full accounting of its review of improper government activity.
The information in the report is, rather, “only a selection of cases we have investigated as a deterrent for state agencies and state employees so they can avoid similar improper governmental activities,” the audit said.
The report said it may have changed the genders of employees in the report so as to protect their identities.
The post California state workers were teleworking from Idaho, Tennessee and Alabama, audit finds appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
