Assembly Discloses Members' Spending Records

Weeks after the Los Angeles Times and The Sacramento Bee filed a lawsuit against the California State Assembly to compel public disclosure of current office budget and spending records, the Senate and Assembly has released member-by-member spending records.

Friday's release—which shows the total expenditure of Assemblymember Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada) from the past eight months to be the highest in the assembly—follows that would force the Legislature to open its books.

"The Assembly's release [of these numbers] underscores the need for transparency more than ever,'' Portantino said by phone Saturday.

"The numbers are misleading, inaccurate and an attempt to hide the members' actual budgets, which is why I introduced the legislation,” he said. “If we exempt ourselves from full disclosure, that's hypocritical—we need to embrace transparency.''

Portantino’s staff members got furlough notices in July after the assemblymember locked horns with Perez. The clash was sparked by the slashing of Portantino’s office budget by Perez, who accused the assemblymember of being an extravagant spender.

Portantino rebutted the allegation and called for all details of state spending by lower house legislators to be made public.  

In an interview with the , Perez' press secretary John Vigna said: “The fact is that we have released every penny spent by the Assembly for last year and this year up to July. Mr. Portantino has been grandstanding throughout this whole event, and now he’s acting like Donald Trump acted when the president’s birth certificate got released.”

You may find the Assembly's 2010 spending here and the 2011 year-to-date spending here.

Portantino's press secretary, Wendy Gordon, told Patch Friday that the Assembly numbers, which show that Portantino spent more than any other Assembly member from Dec. 1, 2010 to July 31, 2011—including Speaker Perez, who has a much larger staff—are "smoke and mirrors.'' 

Regarding Portantino being the biggest spender in the Assembly, the La Cañada resident—besides his own neighborhood he also represents Eagle Rock, Highland Park, South Pasadena, Altadena and parts of Monrovia and Arcadia in the state Assembly—Portantino believe members' budgets have been misrepresented.

Portantino, who's begun raising money for his 2012 Congressional bid, balks at the figures he’s accused of overspending. Here’s an overview of assemblymembers’ spending, based on data released from Assembly Speaker John Perez:

#1 Anthony Portantino, $297,579.99
#2 Mike Feuer, $293,736.85
#3 Ricardo Lara, $289.723.08
#4 Charles Calderon, $284,497.24
#5 Felipe Fuentes, $282,016.90