From his office window overlooking the Capitol Annex construction site, California Family Council Vice President Greg Burt watched something he recognized: massive stone slabs being delivered, the same Italian-fabricated granite Sacramento tried to keep quiet about two years earlier. The Annex is the new headquarters rising beside the historic Capitol dome, built to house the offices of the governor, lieutenant governor, and all 120 state lawmakers, and it is scheduled to open next year. Burt picked up the phone and called KCRA 3’s Ashley Zavala. What followed was another round of statewide coverage on how the Legislature spends taxpayer money on itself, and a five-word verdict from Burt that has since become a rallying cry, picked up by state leaders pushing for the same accountability.
Zavala first reported in 2024 that the Legislature’s Joint Rules Committee quietly spent $5.2 million to mine granite in Raymond, California, ship it to Italy for finishing, and ship it back to Sacramento for installation. It was a small line item inside a project set to open its doors next year at a total cost of $1.2 billion. When Burt noticed the slabs finally arriving this week, he told Zavala what caught his eye: “I heard stories about this granite that went all the way to Italy and I go, could that be it?”
His tip led directly to Zavala’s follow-up story, which confirmed the granite is now being installed on the building’s facade. It also gave her another opening to press the same question CFC has been asking for two years: why won’t the Joint Rules Committee prove the Italian option was actually the cheapest one? The committee still has not released the competing bids, and sources have told KCRA the Italian option may only have been cheaper because Italy does not hold fabricators to the labor and environmental standards required in the United States.
That secrecy runs through the whole project. What voters were told in 2018 would cost $543 million had already climbed past $1 billion by 2022, while thousands of people connected to the project were bound by non-disclosure agreements limiting what they could say publicly. The price has since grown another $98 million, to $1.2 billion, and $668 million has already been spent. Sixty-four million of that has gone to extra security features, including private hallways for lawmakers. Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco and State Senator John Laird, who oversee the project, have refused to release financial records proving the total cost, saying they will do so only once the building is finished in the fall of 2027. The last public hearing on the project was held in 2021.
Burt did not mince words about it: “Where is all that money going? There’s no regard for taxpayer money? That’s disturbing. Taxpayers, they work every day and they expect politicians to spend their money wisely.” In the broadcast segment, he distilled the whole pattern into a single line: “It’s a palace for the politicians.”
That line quickly grew into something bigger than a five o’clock newscast. Within days, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton picked it up too, writing that the building has become “one of the most EXPENSIVE buildings in America” at more than double its original promised cost. California Congressman James Gallagher echoed it as well, confirming that “the Italian stonework is now being installed in the Politicians Palace,” tying responsibility for the ballooning costs to Senate leadership under Senate President pro Tempore Mike McGuire, and closing with a challenge to the state: “We can do so much better California.”
Scripture does not leave the handling of public trust to guesswork. “The LORD detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him” (Proverbs 11:1). A Legislature that has not held a public hearing on its own billion-dollar building in five years, that built itself private hallways while refusing to release the bids behind its Italian stonework, is not practicing the honest dealing Scripture requires of anyone entrusted with someone else’s money. Public office is a stewardship, not a possession, and the taxpayers footing the bill for that palace have every right to see the receipts before the ribbon is cut in 2027, not after.
California Family Council will keep asking the questions Sacramento would rather not answer. If you believe taxpayers deserve to see those records now, not in 2027, contact your state legislator and tell them transparency on the Capitol Annex Project is not optional.
