Squandered tax dollars in Sacramento

The taxpayer money spent by the state consumer affairs chief to attend a Justin Timberlake concert would not have closed the $41-billion-plus budget deficit. The public paychecks picked up by friends and relatives of California lawmakers for jobs of questionable value would not have kept schools open or prevented cuts to healthcare. The private speaking fees accepted by the head of a state agency to appear before companies she helped to regulate would not, if turned over to the state, have held new taxes at bay.

But so what? Misuse of state money and influence is wrong in any amount, and at any time, and it’s especially self-destructive when residents here are paying higher taxes.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger deserves credit for cracking down on the misspent money from his portion of the Capitol, and for requiring his staff’s travel and expenditure reports to be posted online. But it’s astonishing that in what ought to be an era of government penny-pinching, there was so much misuse of money and position in the first place.

Last month, Times staff writer Michael Rothfeld reported on Department of Consumer Affairs Director Carrie Lopez’s taxpayer-funded flight to Los Angeles to attend the Timberlake concert, a trip she documented as a meeting with an energy company. The story noted that more than a few members of the governor’s team charged taxpayers for business trips that looked suspiciously like their regular, non-reimbursable commutes from home to work.

Lopez resigned on Friday. State and Consumer Services Secretary Rosario Marin, who Rothfeld reported took thousands of dollars in fees for speeches to pharmaceutical companies she was supposed to oversee, also resigned last month.

Times staff writer Patrick McGreevy reported Friday on some of the spouses, friends and relatives of lawmakers who parlayed their ties to elected officials into cushy jobs for a combined $754,000 in state funds.

Lawmakers should follow the governor’s lead and clean up their act. The biggest impediment to a budget deal was the belief by many Californians, and the assertion by GOP lawmakers who ought to know better, that Sacramento is rife with waste, fraud and abuse. That’s ridiculous -- there are not billions of dollars just waiting to be reclaimed. But that’s a harder case to make when tax dollars are being squandered or misspent in smaller, but still outrageous, amounts.