A federal judge in New York has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s move to freeze $10 billion in child-care funds in five Democrat-led states including California.
The ruling Friday afternoon capped a tumultuous stretch that began earlier this week when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told California officials and those in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York that it would freeze federal funding over fraud concerns.
On Thursday the states sued the administration in federal court in Manhattan. The states sought a temporary restraining order, asking the court to block the funding freeze and the administration’s demands for large volumes of administrative data.
An attorney for the states argued Friday morning that there was an immediate need for funding — and that withholding it would cause chaos by depriving families of their ability to pay for child care, and would harm child-care providers who would lose income.
In a brief ruling, Judge Arun Subramanian said that “good cause has been shown for the issuance of a temporary restraining order.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The federal government’s effort has been viewed as a broad attack on social services in California, and jolted tens of thousands of working families and the state’s child-care industry. Providers told The Times that the funding freeze could imperil child-care centers, many of which operate on slim margins.
“The underscoring issue is that child care and these other federally funded social services programs are major family supports,” said Nina Buthee, executive director of EveryChild California. “They are essential infrastructure that our communities need and depend on, and should not be political tools. So the fact that this judge went in and blocked this very dramatic freeze, I think is only a good thing.”
In a trio of Jan. 6 letters addressed to Gov. Gavin Newsom, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it was concerned there had been “potential for extensive and systemic fraud” in child care and other social services programs that rely on federal funding, and had “reason to believe” that the state was “illicitly providing illegal aliens” with benefits.
The letters did not provide evidence to support the claims. State officials have said the suggestions of fraud are unsubstantiated.
Newsom has said he welcomes any fraud investigations the federal government might conduct, but said cutting off funding hurts families who rely on the aid. According to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, about $1.4 billion in federal child-care funding was frozen per the letters from Health and Human Services.
“You want to support families? You believe in families? Then you believe in supporting child care and child-care workers in the workforce,” Newsom told MS NOW.
After Subramanian issued the ruling, Newsom’s press office said on X that “the feds went ghost-hunting for widespread ‘fraud’ (with no evidence) — and ended up trying to rip child care and food from kids.”
“It took a federal judge less than 24 hours to shut down Trump’s politically motivated child care cuts in California,” the account posted.
In instituting the freeze, Health and Human Services had said it would review how the federal money had been used by the state, and was restricting access to additional money amid its inquiries. The federal government asked for various data, including attendance documentation for child care. It also demanded beefed-up fiscal accountability requirements.
“Again and again, President Trump has shown a willingness to throw vulnerable children, seniors, and families under the bus if he thinks it will advance his vendetta against Democratic-led states,” Bonta said in a statement following the ruling. “Cutting funding for childcare and other family assistance is cruel, reckless, and most importantly, illegal.”
For Laura Pryor, research director at the California Budget & Policy Center, it is “a sigh of relief.”
California is suing the Trump administration over its “baseless and cruel” decision to freeze $10 billion in federal funding for child care and family assistance allocated to California and four other Democratic-led states, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced Thursday.
The lawsuit was filed jointly by the five states targeted by the freeze — California, New York, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado — over the Trump administration’s allegations of widespread fraud within their welfare systems. California alone is facing a loss of about $5 billion in funding, including $1.4 billion for child-care programs.
The lawsuit alleges that the freeze is based on unfounded claims of fraud and infringes on Congress’ spending power as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This is just the latest example of Trump’s willingness to throw vulnerable children, vulnerable families and seniors under the bus if he thinks it will advance his vendetta against California and Democratic-led states,” Bonta said at a Thursday evening news conference.
The $10-billion funding freeze follows the administration’s decision to freeze $185 million in child-care funds to Minnesota, where federal officials allege that as much as half of the roughly $18 billion paid to 14 state-run programs since 2018 may have been fraudulent. Amid the fallout, Gov. Tim Walz has ordered a third-party audit and announced that he will not seek a third term.
Bonta said that letters sent by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announcing the freeze Tuesday provided no evidence to back up claims of widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in California. The freeze applies to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, the Social Services Block Grant program and the Child Care and Development Fund.
“This is funding that California parents count on to get the safe and reliable child care they need so that they can go to work and provide for their families,” he said. “It’s funding that helps families on the brink of homelessness keep roofs over their heads.”
Bonta also raised concerns regarding Health and Human Services’ request that California turn over all documents associated with the state’s implementation of the three programs. This requires the state to share personally identifiable information about program participants, a move Bonta called “deeply concerning and also deeply questionable.”
“The administration doesn’t have the authority to override the established, lawful process our states have already gone through to submit plans and receive approval for these funds,” Bonta said. “It doesn’t have the authority to override the U.S. Constitution and trample Congress’ power of the purse.”
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Manhattan and marked the 53rd suit California had filed against the Trump administration since the president’s inauguration last January. It asks the court to block the funding freeze and the administration’s sweeping demands for documents and data.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor sold his former mansion for £15m in 2007
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor received millions of pounds from an oligarch using funds from a firm implicated in criminal corruption, a BBC investigation has found.
Kazakh billionaire Timur Kulibayev has told the BBC through his lawyers that he used a loan from a company called Enviro Pacific Investments to help him buy Andrew’s former mansion.
Prosecutors in Italy concluded that the firm had received cash from a bribery scheme in 2007.
Weeks after the last of these payments was made, the oligarch bought Sunninghill Park in Berkshire from the then prince for £15m – with the help of funds from Enviro Pacific.
Kulibayev is the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s then-president and was one of the most influential officials in the central Asian country’s oil and gas industry. The BBC has also learned that, in another case, an Italian businessman pleaded guilty to bribing the oligarch.
Kulibayev’s lawyers told us he has never engaged in bribery or corruption, and the funds used to acquire Sunninghill Park were entirely legitimate.
The revelations raise questions about whether the then-prince may have inadvertently benefited from the proceeds of crime and whether he and his advisers conducted the proper checks required by law to avoid this.
Money laundering expert Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Finance and Security, said the deal had “blatant red flags” which should have prompted detailed checks to ensure it was not “helping to launder the proceeds of corruption”.
Kulibayev reportedly paid £3m more than the asking price and an estimated £7m more than the property’s market value.
The former prince did not respond to the BBC’s requests for comment. He told the Daily Telegraph in 2009, after criticism of the deal: “It’s not my business, the second the price is paid. If that is the offer, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth and suggest they have overpaid me.”
On the market
Sunninghill Park was given to Andrew by the Queen as a wedding gift in 1986. A modern two-storey red-brick mansion, the 12-bedroom house, with 12 matching bathrooms and six reception rooms, was mocked for its resemblance to a Tesco superstore.
After it was first put on the market in 2001 and failed to attract offers, Andrew became personally involved. The former prince used the opportunity of an official visit to Bahrain as the UK’s trade envoy in 2003 to personally try to sell the property to Gulf royals, according to Simon Wilson, who was deputy ambassador at the time.
But a buyer eventually emerged through the then prince’s connections to a different country: Kazakhstan. In 2002, Andrew had become patron of the British-Kazakh Society jointly with the country’s autocratic president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Andrew visited the country in 2006 and, later that year, Nazarbayev met the then Queen at Buckingham Palace.
In 2007, an offer for Sunninghill Park came from Timur Kulibayev, Nazarbayev’s son-in-law.
AP Photo/Nikita Bassov
Timur Kulibayev, pictured in 2011, had a key role in Kazakhstan’s oil and gas industry
At the time, he had a fortune estimated at more than £1bn and a key role running the country’s sovereign wealth fund, Samruk-Kaznya, which owns much of the state’s oil and gas industry.
Andrew had reportedly been introduced to Kulibayev by Kazakh businesswoman and socialite Goga Ashkenazi, who has two children from an affair with the oligarch. She later described the prince as a close friend, but now says she has not had any dealings with him for about 15 years.
Andrew and Ashkenazi were photographed in June 2007 attending Ladies Day at Ascot with the Queen. In the same month, contracts were exchanged for the purchase of Sunninghill. Kulibayev used an offshore company he owned, Unity Assets Corporation, to buy the mansion. The Royal Family’s solicitors, Farrer & Co, acted for the seller.
The transaction was completed in September that year. The same month, royal records show, British taxpayers picked up a bill for £57,000 for a chartered flight for the former prince to visit Kazakhstan on official business as trade envoy.
Getty Images
Andrew was pictured with Goga Ashkenazi, who has two children by Kulibayev, at Royal Ascot
At the time of the sale, the UK government was raising concerns about Kazakhstan. Then-Europe Minister Geoff Hoon told MPs in April 2007 that “allegations of systematic corruption” in the country were “rife”.
Despite these concerns – as well as Andrew’s official role as trade envoy and his position then as fourth-in-line to the throne – the identity of the buyer was not disclosed by either of the parties, or by Buckingham Palace.
In 2007, there was no requirement to identify the owners of offshore companies which bought UK property, and Kulibayev was only named by the media three years later.
Links to corruption
Questions were raised about the deal’s links to corruption in 2012, when media reports said Italian prosecutors were investigating allegations involving Kulibayev.
The allegations included the possibility that bribes might have been used to fund the purchase of Sunninghill Park through Enviro Pacific Investments – the company which has now been confirmed as partly funding the deal. These investigations did not lead to any charges against Kulibayev.
However, the BBC has seen documents from a series of court cases in 2016 and 2017 which together show how Italian prosecutors concluded that Enviro Pacific Investments had received cash from a bribery scheme.
These documents were first obtained by L’Espresso magazine during the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ Caspian Cabals project.
They suggest that Enviro Pacific Investments’ link to corruption was through another company called Aventall. In a case in Monza, Italian oil executive Agostino Bianchi pleaded guilty to paying bribes to Kulibayev and other Kazakh officials over lucrative oil contracts, and Aventall was named as one of the companies used to channel bribes. Kulibayev was not charged.
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Sunninghill Park, built in the 1980s, was mocked for its resemblance to a Tesco superstore
According to Bianchi’s plea agreement, Aventall was run by Massimo Guidotti, who was described as the “mediator” of corruption.
He had created a rating system measuring the influence of Kazakh oligarchs, according to court documents in a related case. In an email from 2009, he gave Kulibayev the maximum five stars. Questioned by prosecutors, Guidotti denied distributing bribes.
In a second case in Milan, prosecutors said Aventall had made payments “of an allegedly corrupt nature” to Enviro Pacific Investments – the company which lent the money for the Sunninghill purchase.
They said $6.5m (£3.27m) had been promised, but they could only find evidence of $1.5m (£755,000) of payments. The last was in April 2007, less than two months before contracts were exchanged for Sunninghill.
The prosecutors said “open sources” showed that Enviro Pacific was linked to Kulibayev. But the Milan proceedings were dismissed in January 2017 – in part because prosecutors could not link the payments to specific contracts or definitively identify the public officials who received the funds.
Kulibayev’s lawyers told the BBC that he denied being bribed, had no involvement in awarding the contracts and has not been the subject of any investigation in Italy. They said Kulibayev ”was not involved in and had no knowledge of any ‘corrupt scheme’ involving Mr Bianchi or Mr Guidotti”.
His lawyers said he has never owned or controlled Enviro Pacific and that the company never held assets on his behalf. When asked who owned it, they did not answer, citing confidentiality.
However, the oligarch’s lawyers confirmed to the BBC that their client “obtained a loan from Enviro Pacific in 2007 for commercial reasons and on purely commercial terms at a market rate” to help fund the purchase of Sunninghill Park.
It means a company alleged to be part of a corruption scheme was also involved in the deal with Andrew.
The oligarch’s lawyers did not deny the reported £6m value of the loan and said Kulibayev had later repaid it, with interest.
They said the funds used to purchase Sunninghill had been entirely legitimate and that all appropriate due diligence would have been carried out at the time. Kulibayev paid £15m to ensure he was successful in buying the property as there was a competing bidder, his lawyers said.
Red flags
Sunninghill lay empty for years after Kulibayev’s purchase and was eventually demolished in 2016. A new, 14-bedroom mansion was eventually built in its place, but it too has never been occupied.
There is no evidence that the former prince knew the source of funds used by Kulibayev to pay for Sunninghill.
But there were multiple features of the sale or “red flags” that should have raised the alarm with lawyers acting for Andrew that at least some of the money could stem from corruption.
These include:
The British government’s concerns about “systematic corruption in Kazakhstan” at the time
Kulibayev’s position as a public official and son-in law to the then Kazakh president
The use of complex offshore structures involving multiple companies and loan agreements without a clear rationale for them
The allegedly inflated price
The lack of transparency over the identity of the purchaser
“Regardless of who you are – royal, oligarch or billionaire – those acting for you in any property transaction should be alert to the risks, both legal and reputational, inherent in offshore investments in UK property,” said Keatinge, the money laundering expert from the Centre for Finance and Security.
He said that since 2004, lawyers have been required to conduct strict checks on the source of funds, including identifying the owner of offshore companies buying property.
Margaret Hodge, the government’s anti-corruption champion, said she was “utterly shocked” by the BBC’s revelations, adding that “proceeds of crime” may have been involved “in what has already been a very controversial sales transaction”.
“These allegations need to be properly investigated by both Parliament and the appropriate national agencies. Nobody is above the law.”
Along with the former prince, Buckingham Palace declined to comment.
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Kulibayev demolished Sunninghill Park and built a new mansion, but it has never been occupied
The Royal Family’s solicitors, Farrer & Co, also declined to comment, citing client confidentiality. The buyer’s solicitor said that all required procedures were undertaken at that time and that the firm knew Kulibayev was the person buying the property.
Since Nazarbayev stood down as president in 2019, Kazakhstan’s new government has begun pursuing a legal case in Switzerland to try to recover millions from individuals and companies it accuses of corruption. The bribery scheme in Italy alleged to involve Kulibayev is part of that legal case, although the oligarch is not among the defendants.
Media reports in early 2025 suggested Kulibayev was in negotiations to pay the Kazakhstan government $1bn (£741m) in connection with an investigation into wealth accumulated during the presidency of his father-in-law.
The oligarch’s lawyers say that his wealth was accumulated through decades of business activity, that he is not under any investigation and that any suggestion he is negotiating to pay compensation for illegally acquired assets is inaccurate.
SACRAMENTO — California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer recently said he was retiring from public office next year, so how does he explain filing papers this week to form a campaign committee for a possible run for lieutenant governor in 2018?
He probably won’t run for lieutenant governor in 2018, but the filing allows him to keep his large political war chest in play to influence elections of other candidates, a spokesman said.
As many other politicians have done, Lockyer is exploiting a much-criticized loophole in the campaign finance law so he can continue to use more than $2.2 million in surplus campaign funds after he leaves office next year.
Normally, an elected official would have to close his campaign committee no later than nine months after the date he leaves office or the term of office ends.
But many politicians form new committees for offices they do not intend to seek so they can continue to have use of the money for years to come. That way they can contribute to candidates and causes using political funds rather than personal funds.
“His decision to retire from elective office stands,” spokesman Tom Dresslar said. “He hasn’t changed his mind. But at this point he doesn’t want to completely foreclose any options in 2018.”
“Besides, to make sure he can continue using the money to support select candidates and causes beyond 2014 he was gonna have to transfer his campaign funds to a new committee eventually. He decided the sooner the better,” Dresslar said.
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration announced late Tuesday that it’s freezing child care funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of some day care centers after a series of fraud schemes involving government programs in recent years.
Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill said on the social platform X that the move is in response to “blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pushed back on X, saying fraudsters are a serious issue that the state has spent years cracking down on but that this move is part of “Trump’s long game.”
“He’s politicizing the issue to defund programs that help Minnesotans,” Walz said.
O’Neill referenced a right-wing influencer who posted a video Friday claiming he found that day care centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had committed up to $100 million in fraud. O’Neill said he has demanded Walz submit an audit of these centers that includes attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations and inspections.
“We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud,” O’Neill said.
The announcement comes one day after U.S. Homeland Security officials were in Minneapolis conducting a fraud investigation by going to unidentified businesses and questioning workers.
There have been years of investigations that included a $300 million pandemic food fraud scheme revolving around the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, for which 57 defendants in Minnesota have been convicted. Prosecutors said the organization was at the center of the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam, when defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program meant to provide food for children.
A federal prosecutor alleged earlier this month that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen. Most of the defendants in the child nutrition, housing services and autism program schemes are Somali Americans, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota.
O’Neill, who is serving as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also said in the social media post Tuesday that payments across the U.S. through the Administration for Children and Families, an agency within the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, will now require “justification and a receipt or photo evidence” before money is sent. They have also launched a fraud-reporting hotline and email address.
The Administration for Children and Families provides $185 million in child care funds annually to Minnesota, according to Assistant Secretary Alex Adams.
“That money should be helping 19,000 American children, including toddlers and infants,” he said in a video posted on X. “Any dollar stolen by fraudsters is stolen from those children.”
Adams said he spoke Monday with the director of Minnesota’s child care services office and she wasn’t able to say “with confidence whether those allegations of fraud are isolated or whether there’s fraud stretching statewide.”
Trump has criticized Walz’s administration over the fraud cases, capitalizing on them to target the Somalia diaspora in the state, which has the largest Somali population in the U.S.
Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has said an audit due by late January should give a better picture of the extent of the fraud. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent additional fraud. He has long defended how his administration responded.
Minnesota’s most prominent Somali American, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, has urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relative few.
The American Academy of Pediatrics sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday, seeking to block nearly $12 million in cuts to the group.
Earlier this month, the federal government “abruptly terminated” grants to the group, the lawsuit says.
The funding supported numerous public health programs, including efforts to prevent sudden unexpected infant death, strengthen pediatric care in rural communities and support teens facing substance use and mental health challenges.
“AAP does not have other sources of grant funding to replace the federal awards, and without the necessary funds it must immediately terminate its work on its dozens of programs that save children’s lives every day,” says the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “Within a few weeks, AAP will have to begin laying off employees dedicated to this critically important work.”
The suit alleges Health and Human Services made the cuts in retaliation for the doctors’ group speaking out against the Trump administration’s positions and actions.
The doctors’ group has been vocal about its support for pediatric vaccines and has publicly opposed the agency’s positions. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who helped lead the anti-vaccine movement for years — is seeking to broadly remake federal policies on vaccines. Earlier this year, the pediatrics group released its own recommendations on COVID-19 vaccines, which substantially diverged from the government’s recommendations.
The group also supports access to gender-affirming care and has publicly criticized Health and Human Services positions on the topic, saying it opposes what it calls the government’s infringements on the doctor-patient relationship.
“The Department of Health and Human Services is using federal funding as a political weapon to punish protected speech, trying to silence one of the nation’s most trusted voices for children’s well-being by cutting off critical public health funding in retaliation for speaking the truth,” Skye Perryman, president and chief executive officer of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. Perryman’s organization is representing the doctors’ group in the case.
A spokesman for Health and Human Services could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mark Del Monte, CEO and executive vice president of the 67,000-member doctors’ group, said the organization depends on its relationship with the federal government.
“We need this partnership to advance policies that prioritize children’s health. These vital child health programs fund services like hearing screenings for newborns and safe sleep campaigns to prevent sudden unexpected infant death,” he said in a statement. “We are forced to take legal action today so that these programs can continue to make communities safer and healthier.”
Dec. 23 (UPI) — A judge in Oregon ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration cannot require states to account for how deportations have affected their populations in order to receive emergency or disaster preparedness funds.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Amy Potter’s ruling came in response to a lawsuit from 11 states challenging new requirements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which they argued created undue burdens on access to hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used to prepare for floods, storms, acts of terrorism and other potential catastrophes.
The ruling concerned a new FEMA policy that shortened the duration of grants to states from three years to one. The agency argued that the shorter period would allow it to better gauge the effectiveness of how states were using the money.
FEMA also required states to provide updated figures on their populations to reflect the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation efforts. Population counts have traditionally been the responsibility of the U.S. Census Bureau.
A group of 11 states – including Michigan, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Kentucky – sued in response to the new requirements.
They argued that the requirements violated the Administrative Procedures Act and imperiled funding used for outreach programs in Hawaii, the deployment of emergency management personnel in North Carolina during tropical storms and staff to respond to flash floods in Maryland.
“This abrupt change in policy is particularly harmful to local emergency management,” wrote Potter.
In Oregon, affected funds were used to help cover the expenses of local emergency managers across the state, she wrote.
With his White House aspirations riding in no small part on the kind of Ohio voter who favors Budweiser over Pouilly-Fuissé, Mitt Romney -– like John F. Kerry before him -– has been struggling mightily to shed his image as a man of the Massachusetts elite.
This weekend, he gave it a break.
Romney took a jaunt to the most rarefied precincts of Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod and Nantucket on Saturday, after a Friday evening of mingling with millionaires in the Hamptons on Long Island.
It was all part of a chase, by private plane of course, for campaign money.
The former governor of Massachusetts left most of his traveling press behind. (“Bad optics,” campaign consultants call it.) Instead, he let just a small pool of reporters tag along to catch glimpses of Romney mostly from afar as he and his entourage made their way along such streets as Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton, N.Y.
“An 8-foot hedge blocked your pooler’s view of Romney exiting the house and getting into his SUV,” a journalist in the pool reported from outside the Southampton estate of hedge fund mogul Martin Gruss, where the Republican candidate stayed overnight on Friday.
Around the time of Romney’s “clambake luncheon” on Martha’s Vineyard, which included a $50,000-a-ticket VIP reception, President Obama was telling a less well-to-do crowd in New Hampshire that his rival was pushing tax cuts for the rich on the premise that “somehow prosperity’s going to rain down on all of you.”
Not that Obama, whose fundraising dinners with the likes of George Clooney have made headlines, hasn’t had optics problems of his own. Republicans trashed Obama when his campaign put out a video of Vogue editor Anna Wintour telling donors “don’t be late” to a soiree at Sarah Jessica Parker’s house on the same day that the unemployment rate notched up to 8.2%.
Romney’s weekend opened at Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, where his motorcade rolled through the stately brick gates and up a long, winding driveway. Guests included NFL football team owners Steve Ross (Miami Dolphins) and Woody Johnson (New York Jets).
“I guess if all golf courses were like this, I can understand why the president plays so much golf,” Romney told donors at the club. “If I had a course like this near me, I think I’d probably play a lot of rounds as well. This is just gorgeous.”
On Martha’s Vineyard, Romney joined donors at a private home near the Farm Neck Golf Club, where Obama and former President Bill Clinton have played during family vacations.
Before taking off for Cape Cod, where billionaire businessman Bill Koch and his wife, Bridget, threw a reception for Romney, the candidate lamented his time spent hunting for money.
“You appreciate all the help you get,” he said. “But you wish you could spend more time on the campaign trail.”
From Cape Cod, Romney flew on to Nantucket, where Kerry’s windsurfing during his 2004 campaign for president was captured on videotape that was used in advertising by PresidentGeorge W. Bush’s reelection campaign to portray the Massachusetts senator as a flip-flopping elitist.
Let’s be candid about the controversy over whether film director Rob Reiner misspent public funds by raiding the child-development program created by his last ballot initiative, Proposition 10, for cash to promote his new Preschool for All ballot initiative.
Reiner’s not the only one taking advantage.
The supervisory standards set up by Proposition 10 in 1998 are scandalously lax. The program uses income from a tobacco surtax, including 50 cents per pack of cigarettes, to fund health, welfare and educational services for children up to age 5 — things like immunization and preschool.
But it has become a feeding trough for people flogging pet projects and for outside consultants of every stripe.
Proposition 10 bestowed a total lack of accountability on the bodies it established to disburse the money — the state Children and Families Commission (headed by Reiner until he took a leave of absence Feb. 24) and 58 county entities, known as “First5” commissions.
The initiative failed to provide guidance on rudimentary issues such as conflicts of interest, competitive bidding or how success should be measured. And each commission was given the responsibility to audit itself.
The sums involved aren’t trivial. The tobacco levy has produced $4 billion to date. Of this haul, 20% goes to the state commission. The rest is apportioned to the county commissions according to each county’s share of statewide live births.
For an example of how individual commissions disburse this money, let’s look at Orange County, the second-largest First5 in the state (after Los Angeles), which receives about $40 million a year. Its vice chairman, the right-wing political pundit Hugh Hewitt, is Reiner’s most vocal and persistent critic.
Back in 2003, the commission awarded a no-bid, $250,000 annual contract to a consulting firm called the White House Writers Group. What is this outfit, you ask? It’s a Washington-based gang mostly comprising former speechwriters and staff members in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. It was proposed for the contract by Hugh Hewitt, himself a former Reagan White House staffer and a personal friend of one of its principals.
Hewitt says he recommended the firm, which is essentially a high-powered PR outfit, to help the commission rectify what had become “four years of limited success in establishing the partnerships we need [in Washington] in the national health and philanthropy communities.” Whether the contract will put a single vaccine in a child’s arm he doesn’t say; I only know that $250,000 a year would buy a lot of vaccines.
Hewitt also says: “I don’t know and have never inquired about the political affiliation” of the firm’s partners and staff. Leaving aside the fatuous suggestion that a conservative Republican with his background could be unaware of the partisan coloration of such an obvious GOP nest, he doesn’t have to “inquire.” It’s trumpeted loudly on the firm’s website.
Hewitt observes that the OC commission also employs former Democratic assemblyman Phil Isenberg as its lobbyist in Sacramento, as though to prove that the commission is an equal-opportunity political piggy bank.
This got me thinking: Why in heaven’s name does a county commission, with a guaranteed revenue stream and representation in the capital by the statewide First5 commission and by a separate association of county First5 commissions, need its own Sacramento lobbyist?
Hewitt says it’s to keep the Legislature “mindful of the difference between the state commission and the local initiatives.”
What’s the cost of teaching legislators the difference between “state” and “county”? Since 2002, the OC commission has paid Isenberg’s current and former lobbying firms $340,762. That would probably cover the wages of a few school nurses.
Finally, let’s consider the OC commission’s featured new health initiative. This is an avian flu preparedness program, to which it allocated $2.3 million in November. Orange County is the only First5 commission that has established such a program, according to its executive director, Michael Ruane.
As it happens, the avian flu is an issue dear to the particular heart of Hugh Hewitt, who writes incessantly on his weblog about the imminent threat of an avian flu pandemic. Hewitt acknowledges that he “urged the Commission to consider and adopt” the avian flu plan. Reading between the lines, it sounds like his baby.
But at the moment, a large-scale threat to human health from the avian flu is entirely conjectural. Though the virus is spreading rapidly from Asia outward (it hasn’t reached North or South America), the threat is still largely to birds and, to a much smaller degree, farmers and other humans who come in direct contact with the infected animals.
The few known cases of human-to-human transmission — a prerequisite for a pandemic — resulted from extremely close contact with an infected person, such as between mother and child. Experts say the virus would have to mutate to become freely transmissible among humans, and although they don’t rule out the possibility, it hasn’t happened. The federal Centers for Disease Control don’t even recommend that Americans avoid travel to affected regions.
Hewitt defends the program by arguing that children will be “among the most vulnerable groups to the deadly virus.” But that can be said about almost any transmissible disease. Hewitt doesn’t explain why he believes that federal, state and local authorities will be so overmatched by the avian flu that the First5 commission, which has countless other ways to spend its money, needs to step up to the plate.
The irony is that spending on consultants and pet projects like these sends conservatives bouncing off the ceiling when they catch liberals at it. A Wall Street Journal editorial Hewitt quotes approvingly in his weblog commented pointedly, citing the Los Angeles Times, that First5 money “has found its way into the bank accounts of public relations and advertising firms, some of which are run by friends of Mr. Reiner.”
But sweetheart deals and personal hobbyhorses that divert money from children’s programs know no partisan boundaries. How are the friends of Mr. Hewitt doing?
Golden State appears every Monday and Thursday. You can reach Michael Hiltzik at golden.state@latimes.com and view his web log at latimes.com/goldenstateblog.
