Is Italian stone the best building material with which to clad a monumental public building in a capital city?
We’re not saying it’s not. Look at Rome — not only was it not built in a day, it’s holding up pretty well after more than 2,000 years of being a capital city built of Italian stone.
But we’d also like to think that governance had advanced in some small ways after two millennia, and that the citizens who are paying for said building materials know what they cost and what the alternatives are.
But that can prove impossible in the state of California when its Legislature is acting as the general contractor.
The latest case in point is the ongoing secrecy involved in the planning and construction of the $1.2 billion taxpayer-funded Capitol Annex that will house state lawmakers, the governor and lieutenant governor.
As Ashley Zavala reports for KCRA in Sacramento, the state “has been using non-disclosure agreements to keep most information secret” about the project. Project “leaders required more than 2,000 people to sign the NDAs, including several current and former state lawmakers, government officials, dozens of state employees and hundreds of other consultants, contractors, architects, construction and utility workers,” she reports.
What is this, a Hollywood marriage?
A small committee in the Legislature has threatened legal action against those who squeal about financial details, and “most recently refused to provide KCRA 3 bid information to prove that the millions it secretly spent on Italian stonework was the most affordable option for taxpayers,” Zavala reports.
And this after it’s been over three years since the Legislature provided an update on the progress of the project, which ballooned in that time from a formerly $440 million undertaking.
We questioned the real need for the annex in the first place — or at least lavish offices, as opposed to just offices. But this is beyond the pale.
“We’re not talking national security, we’re not talking nuclear codes,” said David Loy, the legal director for the First Amendment Coalition. “This is public money on a public building. It’s exactly the kind of thing the public has a right to know.”