California's Unfinished Business | Helping lawmakers hold themselves accountable

By Julie Watts CBS California Investigative Correspondent Julie Watts is a national-award-winning investigative correspondent for CBS News California. Based in California's State Capitol, Julie's reporting combines watchdog journalism with solutions-focused storytelling to expose systemic failures, hold the powerful accountable, spur legislative reforms, increase transparency and drive change. Read Full Bio Updated on: November 10, 2026 / 9:53 AM EST / CBS News California Add CBS News on Google Californians pay the state auditor to identify fraud, waste, and abuse in state government. Each audit comes with extensive research, data and recommended solutions, including changes to state law. State agencies are required by law to publicly report when they fail to implement those recommendations. Lawmakers are not. A CBS California investigation found lawmakers failed to enact roughly three out of every four state audit recommendations to the legislature. The result: tens of billions of dollars lost, wasted, or mismanaged and ongoing public safety concerns. CLICK TO EXPLORE: California Lawmaker Audit Accountability Tracker READ THE INVESTIGATION: California lawmakers ignore most state audit warnings, costing billionsThey didn't just ignore audit warnings - California lawmakers quietly killed dozens of audit-backed bills In 2022, the newly appointed state auditor stopped issuing the annual reports that summarized outstanding legislative recommendations. To help state lawmakers hold themselves accountable, CBS California compiled a decade of legislative audit recommendations into a first-of-its-kind Audit Accountability Tracker. This interactive tool details what lawmakers were told to fix, how audit-backed bills died, and what remains unresolved. Search the database by audit topic, issue, agency, policy committee, or level of inaction to see a summary of related recommendations. For a deeper dive:Click the audit number to see the full list of recommendations for that audit. Click the status for details on the most recent legislative action. Where legislation was introduced, click the bill number for details on the bill and how it died. John Kelly contributed to this report. In: Julie Watts Investigates Politics CBS California Investigates California California's Unfinished Business