State Bungling Plans for Sesquicentennial, Panel Says

A state legislative task force has charged that the government is mismanaging efforts to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the discovery of gold--the event that led to California statehood.

The California Gold Discovery to Statehood Sesquicentennial Commission has been late getting organized, has made some questionable expenditures of public funds and has missed opportunities to raise private funds, according to the joint legislative staff task force on government oversight.

The task force recommended that no additional public money be appropriated pending a legislative hearing and suggested that legislators consider bypassing the commission and awarding any additional money directly to local communities planning commemorations.

Assemblyman Mike Machado (D-Linden) has ordered a hearing on the task force report next week before his Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife.

Although the sesquicentennial commission’s executive director submitted his resignation to Gov. Pete Wilson last week, Wilson’s spokesman, Sean Walsh, told Associated Press that the controversy was a tempest in a partisan teapot, noting that the task force is controlled by Democrats and Wilson is a Republican. Plans for the celebration are proceeding on schedule, Walsh said.

In a report issued late last month, the task force said that a nonprofit foundation--a spinoff of the sesquicentennial commission Wilson appointed in 1994--is failing in its efforts to raise at least $5 million by mid-1998.

The task force said it could not tell exactly how much had been raised to date because the foundation had not filed any of the tax returns required under state and federal law.

However, the task force estimated that the foundation has raised no more than $500,000 and spent much of that on travel to the East Coast and Scotland to talk to captains of tall ships in preparation for the celebration’s planned centerpiece--a 1999 flotilla of tall ships sailing from San Francisco to San Diego.

Wilson spokesman Walsh said that since the task force report was written, corporations have pledged $3 million to $4 million to the celebration.

“While it may have had some initial stutters, stops and starts, the three-year program is rolling along and money is starting to come in,” Walsh told the wire service.

Some communities in the Gold Country, which have already kicked off celebrations, have been vocal in condemning the sesquicentennial commission for failure to provide financial help.

One commission member from the Gold Country, Steve Lund, has also criticized the commission’s lack of a comprehensive plan. “We have no strategic planning,” he told the task force.

The celebration is to mark the span from the start of the Gold Rush to statehood.

To spur it, the Legislature has so far appropriated more than $2 million for the commission, which sent $350,000 to the foundation so that it could hire consultants to entice corporations to make donations or sponsor events.

The questionable expenditures cited by the task force involve spending more than $200,000 of this money on “nonproductive consulting contracts.” Some of the consultants told the task force they received very little guidance from the foundation.

The task force said it was unable to account for the remaining $150,000, concluding: “It is possible that the money was unspent or was diverted to some other use.”