By Ashley Zavala
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —California lawmakers will consider a bill that could force public conversations on the secretive California Capitol Annex project for the first time in years.
Assemblyman Josh Hoover, R-Folsom, filed AB 2445 which would invalidate the non-disclosure agreements that have been shielding basic information from the public about the taxpayer funded project. The project includes a new office building and parking garage for state lawmakers and the governor that is expected to be complete by Fall of 2027.
Non-disclosure agreements are contracts that legally force people to keep quiet. In September of 2024, KCRA 3 first reported project leaders forced more than 2,000 people and counting to sign them, including some state lawmakers, government officials and members of Gov. Gavin Newsom's staff.
"This comes after years working behind the scenes and across the aisle to get information on the capitol annex," Hoover said in an interview with KCRA 3 Wednesday. He said those efforts didn't gain a lot of traction, and project leaders continue to keep information not just from the public, but also lawmakers.
"We need to have a public conversation," he said.
Hoover's bill would also prohibit the construction of a visitor's center on the state capitol's iconic west side. Project leaders quietly decided to not move forward with that aspect of the plan but told no one until KCRA 3 pressed for information last summer. Hoover wants the decision put into state law.
The California Legislature's Joint Rules Committee overseeing the project has not held a single hearing on it since 2021 and the group has not updated the estimated cost to taxpayers since 2022, which at the time was set at $1.1 billion.
Nearly three months after project leaders Assemblywoman Blanca Pacheco and State Senator John Laird promised to be more transparent, they have yet to update taxpayers on the price tag. They have also rejected KCRA 3's repeated requests for an interview since the start of this year.
Pacheco and Laird would not do an interview for this story and did not have an update on a cost estimate as of Wednesday night. A spokesperson for the project said the project's new management company was still "crunching the numbers" and would provide an update as soon as possible.
Project leaders have been saying this since December.
"We are aware of the legislative proposal pending in the Assembly and will let the legislative process run its course," Pacheco and Laird said in a joint statement.
"I see a brave leadership doing the right thing and getting the issue behind them," said Dick Cowan, the former leader of the now defunct Historic State Capitol Commission who was part of a group that sued over the project.
"If the leadership ignores this bill, if they don’t refer it to a committee, if they don’t give it a hearing, that public trust is still at risk."
Back in 2016, California lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown agreed to demolish the capitol's 1950's annex building and construct a new one citing safety issues. The plan included not just a new building but also a parking garage and visitor's center on the west side of the state capitol.
The 525,000 square foot office building will specifically house the offices of California's 120 state lawmakers, governor and lieutenant governor. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis will no longer be in office once it's complete.
In 2021, a group named Save Our Capitol sued over the project citing environmental concerns. A state appellate court sided with the group, agreeing that project leaders did not provide the public with an accurate description of the project or a thorough analysis of how the demolition of the old annex would impact the environment.
In 2024, California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom rushed a bill that exempted the project from the California Environmental Quality Act to halt the litigation.
A year after that litigation ended, project leaders continued to use it as an excuse to not update taxpayers on the cost. Even with a price tag of about $1.1 billion, it would still be considered one of the most expensive buildings in the country and cost nearly as much as an NFL stadium.
Project leaders said they've spent $573.8 million so far and that it was 50% complete as of December of 2025.
The legislature's Joint Rules Committee has been keeping basic information about the project confidential since it started.
In the fall of 2024 through a series of open records requests, KCRA 3 broke the story that more than 2,000 people signed the broad non-disclosure agreements including five state lawmakers, dozens of government officials, and a handful of people in the governor's office.
With the information protected under NDAs, the estimated price tag of the project doubled between 2018 and 2021.
Various legal experts told KCRA 3 they were alarmed by the development noting taxpayers and voters are entitled to the information. While it is legal, some state lawmakers and experts said the use of NDAs like this should be banned. Hoover's bill attempts to prohibit the use of NDAs in this manner moving forward.
"I think when you're going to spend over a billion dollars, you need to have more transparency than this," Hoover said.
The original legislative architect of the Capitol Annex Project and the establishment of the NDAs was then Assemblyman Ken Cooley, a Democrat from Sacramento. Hoover defeated Cooley in the 2022 election. Cooley has ignored years' worth of KCRA 3's requests for information surrounding the decision to use NDAs.
Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco replaced Cooley as the leader of the Joint Rules Committee when Cooley lost his seat. She and Vice Chairman of the committee, State Senator John Laird, have defended the use of the NDAs stating they're meant to protect security and bid information
"The NDAs are for public safety. They exist to protect the physical integrity of the building and safeguard everyone – legislators, staff, journalists and the multitude of daily schoolchildren and visitors. Invalidating these standard safety protocols would be a serious security risk."
The project NDAs do not explicitly say the words security and bid information. They protect any and all information related to the project. When pressed about this in an interview in December, Pacheco said, "These were drafted by legal counsel, and I can't say why legal counsel would draft it in such a manner. Sometimes legal counsel prefers to have broad language."
Cowan has said Hoover's proposal to get rid of them will be the only way for project leaders to truly know what went wrong.
"They have to talk to everyone involved, because at the moment those people are afraid to speak," Cowan said.
Longtime lobbyist and Adjunct McGeorge School of Law Professor Chris Micheli said if lawmakers were to pass the proposal, it could be challenged in court.
"States can't impair existing contracts," Micheli noted. "However, if there were a legal challenge, how would the courts look at it? Is it reasonable? Is it necessary? Does it serve a significant public purpose? I think if those three tests are viewed favorable then the invalidation could occur."
Project leaders have been making a series of decisions behind closed doors and have a history of withholding public records.
KCRA 3 reported in 2024 the secret stonework project leaders quietly approved that involved mining 2 million pounds of rock from Central California, shipping it to Italy to be finished into stone and shipping it back to the state to eventually be placed on part of the facade of the new building.
Following the January 6 attacks on the nation's capitol, project leaders also added millions in new security expenses.
State law has given project leaders the ability to meet and decide aspects of the project outside of public view. In addition to the leaders of the Joint Rules Committee, public records show the meetings also include the governor's Director of Operations, the director of the Department of General Services and a representative with the project's management company. Neither the governor's office nor Joint Rules Committee could provide records showing how long these meetings lasted and whether a vote took place.
Records provided to KCRA 3 through a Legislative Open Records Request show this group met nine times in 2019, seven times in 2020, one time in 2023 and one time in 2025.
The state law that established the capitol annex also established the west side visitor's center, which has yet to materialize.
The west side is the capitol's main public square where there are often protests, demonstrations, press conferences and major events.
Hoover's bill AB 2445 would change the annex law and prohibit the demolition of the West Steps for a visitor's center and require any future visitor's center to be placed anywhere else around the state capitol.
The visitor's center was also at the center of the environmental lawsuit.
Project leaders confirmed to KCRA 3 last year that they did not intend to move forward with the visitor's center. It's not clear what they plan to do with the money that was meant for it.
"During the legal process it was determined that the best path forward to finish the Annex on time, was to no longer pursue the Visitors Center on the West Steps. At this time, we are focused on finishing the Annex and a conversation about building a Visitor’s Center may begin at a later date," Pacheco and Laird said in a joint statement.
"Those words are not as comforting as the words I would want to hear, that ‘we commit, we’ll put in writing,’" Cowan told KCRA 3 in an interview. "Those are nice soft words but they don’t prevent work from starting later."
Records provided to KCRA 3 show on July 31, 2025, project leaders notified Plant Construction Company that the work had not been approved to proceed after stalling since 2023 because of the lawsuit.
"We thank you for your work on the Visitor Center and look forward to a future opportunity to work with your team," wrote the Chief Administrative Officers of the Senate and Assembly, Erika Contreras and Lia Lopez.
