By Asm. Josh Hoover
From 15:18 --> 22:43
Asm. Josh Hoover: "Last story I wanted to mention, just because it's one of my favorite topics that I always like to talk about, is there was a big new update on the Capitol Annex Project. So interestingly, there was, and we'll put a link in the notes with more information, but there was actually a new management of the project.
They actually got rid of the old project manager and brought in someone new a few months ago. And this was sort of the first big project update that we've seen from that new management. Not a lot of good news. I guess $98 million or so over budget is what is now being projected. Remember, that original budget was $1.1 billion. So $98 million over is somewhat problematic. They're claiming that they're not going to come back to the legislature for more money. I'm not quite sure how that's going to work. But that is sort of the current plan. Now, the one thing that I found really interesting is, the rumor is that they're also abandoning the Visitor Center on the West Steps, which is a part of the project that I've been opposed to for a very long time."
Tom Sheehy: "Are they doing that for cost savings or are they doing that for some political reason?”
Hoover: “Well, so I think there are some political reasons because I've been talking a long time about preserving the West Steps. But I think most of it is cost savings. I think they're out of money. That was going to be a big chunk of additional costs. It's an easy way for them to just cut costs there and put it into overages in the main Annex building. But I think it's really interesting because they're getting rid of a pretty big part of the project with the Visitor Center, and the budget is still going up, which I think says that they're way over budget. But anyway, I didn't know if you had any thoughts on that story."
Sheehy: "Well, so I'm following it too, perhaps not as closely as you. Couple of thoughts just from the outside looking in, and it has been pretty opaque, so it's not that clear of a view. But it really does seem that a lot of this over the last three or four years has been highly staff driven, and not necessarily being driven by elected officials.
Whether it be on the governor staff or the legislature, I'm not really, I'm not sure, I'm not sure who's carrying the bigger stick. But I think that it's a concern, the lack of information sharing. If it were not for Ashley Zavala, I'm not sure we'd know anything about what's going on. I wish we had five more journalists like her, male and female of course, doing that type of work. There just aren't enough people asking questions."
Hoover: "Totally."
Sheehy: "I'm concerned about the costs. I'd make one observation here. If the governor, any governor, it could be a Republican governor, a Democrat governor, but any future governor, were to push the legislature authorization for a new office building, a new state office building, and got the funding appropriated for it, had a general outline of what it was going to be.” Then once they got down to the nitty gritty of it, had their executive staff, the governor's executive staff, issue a series of non-disclosure agreements, NDAs and made everybody that was going to touch this thing, including members of the legislature, sign an NDA, and then proceeded into the procurement process, finding and letting contracts for the builders, and so on and so forth, and wasn't publishing information about what was going on, and how it was going, and what it was costing, and where are the change orders, and how much is all this costing. If some governor did that for a state office building, and kept the legislature as an institution, as a body, in the dark, as much as your colleagues and the public have been kept in the dark on this project, there'd be hell to pay.
Your colleagues on both sides of the aisle would be raising hell, and the minority party would probably have the loudest voice, but I'm sure that the majority party would be as well, because that's not the right way to build a public project. And so I think they violated a lot of rules here. I think they've some really bad precedents.
I think the use of NDAs in a public project process is really unacceptable. And I'd love to hear more Democrats who control the policy apparatus in the legislature speak up in opposition to that. I just don't think it's right."
Hoover: "Yeah, and it's interesting. So you mentioned Ashley Zavala. She sat down with the two chairs of the Rules Committee this week, or last week, I should say, about the new update. And it's worth a watch. I'll try to find it and put it in the notes.”
Sheehy: "Just John Laird and..."
Hoover: "John Laird and Blanca Pacheco."
Sheehy: "Blanca Pacheco."
Hoover: "And it was a very uncomfortable interview. I will say it was not a friendly interview, which is fine with me. But it was, you know, they were very, it seemed very uncomfortable answering these questions."
Sheehy: "And they shouldn't be."
Hoover: "And that's the frustrating part. It's like, just answer, you know, I think it would be much easier if everyone was just upfront about what was going on with the projects. I think because when you're not, it just raises more suspicion."
Sheehy: "What are you hiding? What is it you don't want the public to know? What are you hiding?"
Hoover: "So I'll try to find that and put it in the show notes. I mean, I hear you. It's like it's so frustrating. And, you know, I'm really glad you mentioned the NDAs because that is one of the most ridiculous parts of this project. At the beginning of this year, I actually introduced legislation that would void all of those NDAs and it would also prohibit NDAs on a future public project. I've gotten a lot of bills through the legislative process this year. I've had one bill that has not been referred to committee."
Sheehy: "Oh, your NDA bill."
Hoover: "And it's the NDA bill."
Sheehy: "So not only did it not get set to be heard, but it never even got referred."
Hoover: "It never even got referred out of the Rules Committee, right? Which I think says a lot, right? And the irony of this is one of the, I don't know if anyone's walked by the, if you're in downtown Sacramento, you got to take a peek at the new Annex because it's moving along pretty quickly. But it's sort of this giant glass building. It doesn't really match the character of the historic Capitol. But one of the reasons they went with glass is because they wanted it to reflect the transparency of government and how we need to be transparent. I just find that so incredibly ironic given the fact that everyone in the project signed an NDA and it's quite literally been one of the least transparent projects in the history of California."
Sheehy: "We need less virtue signaling and more actual transparency. That's what we need."
Hoover: "100 percent. Frustrating, but I was honestly glad to see at least some update on thisThe new opening timeline for this new building is going to be October of 2027, which is just over a year away. They've spent up to this point $632 million of that 1.1 billion and expect to go a little bit over. But I think we need to keep holding their feet to the fire and making sure that we're finding ways to stay within budget on this. It's a little late to stop this project at this point if anyone's walked by it recently, but I do think it's important that the public knows what they're paying for."
Sheehy: "100 percent."
Hoover: "100 percent. That's the story that never dies. I've been talking about this building for four years. It's been pretty interesting."
