State Controller Malia Cohen’s Office Lost Track of Remote Workers for Years, Auditor Finds

California State Controller Malia Cohen — the official responsible for auditing how public money gets spent — couldn’t keep track of her own employees or collect the money they owed, according to a new State Auditor’s report.

Two managers in Cohen’s office worked remotely from Idaho, Alabama, and Tennessee for years while listing California addresses on their telework agreements. One manager admitted to working from Idaho “just about every day” after moving there in November 2020, concealing his location because he feared losing his job. The other split time between Alabama and Tennessee while listing California locations on paperwork. Investigators concluded she was “more likely than not” a resident of another state.

Cohen’s senior officials also “purposefully” delayed collecting more than $33,000 in employee overpayments, then tried to get the state to pay “damages” to cover the losses — an idea State Auditor Grant Parks called “poorly conceived.” Parks concluded the failures “risked providing [State Controller’s Office] employees with a gift of public funds.”

The Controller’s Office disputed the finding, saying it had started collection within three years. The auditor rejected that argument, finding officials canceled required payroll deductions without reasonable justification.

Cohen is up for reelection in November. She did not respond to a request for comment. Her opponent, Herb Morgan, called the findings more than “a paperwork error.”

“While Sacramento tells Californians to live here, work here, and pay here, the Controller’s Office had staff teleworking from Idaho, Tennessee, and Alabama — and admitted it does not check where its people actually work,” Morgan said. “If Malia Cohen cannot police her own payroll or her own telework, she has no business auditing anyone else’s.”

Both remote workers have since left the office. The Controller’s Office said it’s finalizing a revised telework policy with periodic location monitoring.

The Controller’s Office findings were two of nine substantiated cases in the State Auditor’s report detailing approximately $885,000 in wasted, misspent, lost, or improperly distributed state funds. Other cases included a CAL FIRE employee who used a state vehicle to commute for five years and billed the travel time as work (costing taxpayers an estimated $69,000), and a CalRecycle employee who rented and drove state vehicles for more than a year with a suspended license — including 116 days she wasn’t scheduled to work — racking up nearly $22,000 in rental and fuel costs.

The Breakdown

• State Controller Malia Cohen oversees California’s payroll system and audits how state agencies spend public money.
• A State Auditor’s report found two managers in Cohen’s office worked remotely from Idaho, Alabama, and Tennessee for years while listing California addresses on telework agreements.
• One manager admitted to working from Idaho “just about every day” starting in November 2020. The other worked from Alabama and Tennessee. Both have since left the office.
• Cohen’s senior officials “purposefully” stalled collecting more than $33,000 in employee overpayments and tried to get the state to pay “damages” to cover the losses.
• State Auditor Grant Parks said the idea was “poorly conceived” and the failures “risked providing employees with a gift of public funds.”
• The Controller’s Office said it did not typically monitor employees’ telework locations and its policy lacked explicit language requiring employees to generally telework within California.
• The office is finalizing a revised telework policy with periodic location monitoring.

What This Means for You

You’re voting for State Controller in November. The person in that office is supposed to audit everyone else’s spending and catch waste before it happens. This report says the current officeholder couldn’t track her own employees or collect money they owed — the exact failures she’s supposed to catch elsewhere. Whether that disqualifies her from another term is your call, but the audit gives you a specific record to weigh against her opponent’s ability to actually run the office.

What You Can Do

The November election for State Controller is on your ballot. Malia Cohen is the incumbent; Herb Morgan is her challenger. This report is one piece of their records — read both candidates’ positions and decide whose management you trust with the state’s financial oversight.

What to Watch

The Controller’s Office is finalizing a new telework policy with location monitoring. Whether that policy actually gets enforced, or just becomes another piece of paper employees can ignore, depends entirely on who’s running the office after November. The pattern here isn’t complicated: the office responsible for catching waste in other agencies couldn’t catch it in its own building. If the same management stays in place, what changes — and if new management takes over, does it actually fix the problem or just talk about it? The $33,000 in uncollected overpayments is a fraction of the office’s budget, but the failure to collect it signals whether the office takes its own rules seriously. That matters when the same office is supposed to hold everyone else accountable.