In today's newscast:
Unspent housing grant money
The Salinas community development department has presented its annual performance report to the city council.
It lists how the city is using federal funds for things like building housing and operating homelessness programs. Several projects have not yet begun.
At the meeting this week, council member Tony Barrera asked how people can keep track.
"As you hear the people that we work for, on a weekly basis, they're coming in," he says, "and (they) ask us when are we gonna start building houses?"
In response, staff highlighted that in May, Salinas created a public dashboard to track total units approved, permitted and built.
Editor's note: an earlier version of this story, and the audio, misidentified the city council member. He is Tony Barrera.
High speed rail consultant expenses questioned
An independent inspector is calling for California’s high-speed rail project to improve oversight of consultants. It found hundreds of thousands of dollars in inappropriate expenses.
Democratic Senate Transportation Chair Dave Cortese, in a statement, condemned the consultants for the unauthorized travel expenses and said he would demand management accountability if any rail authority employee was complicit.
In another statement, Republican Senate Transportation Vice Chair Tony Strickland calls for more accountability over how taxpayer dollars are being spent.
But UC Berkeley transportation expert Ethan Elkind says the findings raise a broader question about how much the project still relies on outside consultants.
"You’d like to see the state not really have to rely on consultants," Elkind said. "You’d rather see that expertise brought in-house. That was an really early problem for the system."
Elkind also says the travel investigation highlights the need to look at the authority’s basic accounting and reimbursement processes.
A spokesperson for the rail authority says it's working with the inspector general to strengthen internal controls and attempting to recover unauthorized expenses.
That reporting comes from our partner, CapRadio.
