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How Will Betty Yee Govern, if Elected?

Betty Yee is currently running for governor of California. During her eight years as State Controller, she was also Chairman of the Board for the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB), which is California’s income tax agency. I followed the work she did regarding FTB very closely, and have kept an eye on her since she left office. 

I believe that Ms. Yee is genuinely committed to her ideology, which includes opacity about government spending, increasing government authoritarianism, eliminating constituent’s rights, increasing social welfare programs that are questionable in terms of being ethical and lawful, rewarding corruption and unlawfully overcharging taxpayers. Here are a few of the things she has done over the years that have caused me to form this opinion:

  • When Betty Yee was State Controller, she stated in court that she wasn’t tracking how she was spending California’s money.

OpentheBooks.com, a government watchdog organization, sued her to open the accounting ledgers to show where our tax dollars were being spent.  From the article: 

“…Controller Betty Yee rejected our sunshine request for the state checkbook. Oddly, the rejection didn’t argue the law, but instead claimed that the controller couldn’t locate a single one of the 49 million bills she paid last year. This admission provides a troubling clue to California taxpayers who are wondering how and where their money is being spent. The answer is the people spending it literally don’t know. Or they at least say that don’t.”

In January 2022, the judge agreed with Yee that the burden on the state OUTWEIGHTED the public interest in transparency. 

I believe one of the reason that she refused to share records – and why the judge let her get away with not sharing records — was because she was hiding an off-the-books spending account. In 2020, I sued FTB in San Diego Superior Court (SDSC). During the court case, I alleged that FTB was temporarily embezzling estimated tax payments. FTB did not deny the allegations, and per California law, failure to deny constitutes admission of truth. 

Per the records provided by FTB, the temporarily embezzled payments were identified as “no payments.” The only purpose I can think of to identify payments as “no payments” is to not include these funds into the revenue collected totals. 

The accounting irregularities with the “no payments” were so egregious that I believe they qualify as accounting fraud. This leads me to believe that the “no payment” account is a spending account, and they move money around to cover their tracks. I have been trying to get more information about this “no payment” account for several years. FTB has repeatedly given deceptive answers. FTB has not specifically denied the allegations of an off-the-books spending account. In court, failure to deny constitutes admission of truth. 

  • Betty Yee was made it expensive and difficult to dispute tax liabilities/improperly imposed penalties, which is essentially a deprivation of our taxpayer rights. 

Here are some excerpts from an article I wrote about it: 

*Governor Brown and State Controller Betty Yee have recently re-structured the Appeals process to make it more expensive and/or difficult to recover these unfairly applied penalties, fees and interest. 

*It looks to me like the State Government is sanctioning these unlawful collection practices and rigging the system to ensure that taxpayers can’t get this unlawfully collected money back.

Up until January 2018, if a Taxpayer believed they were unfairly charged penalties, fees and interest by the Franchise Tax Board, they could file an appeal with the Board of Equalization (BOE).

The taxpayer who was filing the dispute appeared before the elected BOE representatives to explain why the fees were unjustly charged. No attorney was needed, though you could utilize one. It was a relatively quick process. Being elected officials who were eager to please their constituents, the BOE tended to side with the taxpayers.

A new department was created to handle appeals, called the Office of Tax Appeals. It is an administrative court system (which means faux court masquerading as a real statutory law court), with three judges presiding over the matter. An attorney is necessary, and the process takes at least a full year.

Opponents of this re-org argued that it wasn’t fair to the Taxpayer to have to pay litigation costs to get their unfair penalties refunded. As I found out when I was attorney shopping for my own appeal, it costs a minimum of $5,000 to hire an attorney for a simple case. In most cases, the attorney costs would be more than the refund in question, so it wouldn’t be financially viable to pursue. Even if someone is looking to recover more than an attorney would charge, they may not have the money to pay an attorney up front.

Not a lot of credence was given to this argument because there is a program called the Tax Appeals Assistance Program (TAAP) that provides free student attorneys to people who have filed an appeal against the FTB, as long as their claim is under $30,000.  In January 2019, the TAAP program was moved (by Yee) to be under the FTB. Uh huh. This is a case where the fox is guarding the henhouse.

  • Yvette Stowers stated that when Betty Yee was State Controller, Yee had pushed for tax credits for low-income people and an “education” program alert low-income people about these tax credits. 

Yvette Stowers is currently the executive director for the Board of Equalization (BOE). Prior to that, she was Betty Yee’s right-hand woman for 14 years. The education program that she referred to in her speech is administered by FTB. In addition to helping low-income people find free tax filing options, the contract also requires the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) who receive the funds to help undocumented migrants apply for Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs). The “education” program appears to be a cover for a scheme to funnel money to NGOs to track and register undocumented migrants for social services, including free healthcare through Covered California. Anyone who applies for Covered California is mailed a voter registration card. Allegations have been made that someone is tracking the ID #s of the cards, and if the cards are not returned by the insurance subscriber, that person registers the subscriber on their behalf. So the subscriber has no idea they are voting in elections.

  • It appears that Betty Yee committed pension fraud to reward one of her underlings who got caught committing crimes under her authority.

I believe that in that in my SDSC case against FTB, Keith Swank committed five counts of perjury, five counts of collusion to cover up racketeering, five counts of collusion to cover up embezzlement and fifteen counts of obstruction of justice. 

I believe that Chelsea Hubbard committed six counts of perjury, ten counts of obstruction of justice, ten counts of collusion to cover up embezzlement, and three counts of collusion to cover up racketeering. 

I believe that Grace LeBleu made two false statements to the court and violated my taxpayer rights to have copies of my records. She also gave my and my husband’s social security numbers to Deputy Attorney General Anna Barsegyan. Anna Barsegyan then posted those numbers on the internet. 

I believe that all these people were coerced by Bill Hilson, who was the head of the litigation department at the time. Bill Hilson retired in 2022, shortly after I filed two sets of criminal charges with the federal government: one set against two FTB employees for committing fraud and Deputy Attorney General Anna Barsegyan for harassment and retaliation for exposing the fraud; the other was filed against two different FTB employees and Deputy Attorney General Anna Barsgeyan for covering up fraud.

Betty Yee was the Chairman of the Franchise Tax Board for the duraction of the court case. In Bill Hilson’s retirement speech, he was speaking directly to members of the board: Betty Yee, her right hand man, Deputy Controller of Taxation Anthony Epolite, and Malia Cohen (who is now State Controller and Chairman of FTB’s Board of Directors). At 9:50, Hilson says “I can’t thank you enough for what you are doing for me,” but didn’t clarify what he was referring to. The next year, when salary numbers came out, Bill Hilson had made $136,000 more in 2022 than he had in any other year prior, despite the fact that he’d only worked a portion of the year. When I asked FTB to disclose why Bill Hilson made so much extra money, they gave an evasive answer. 

I believe that Betty Yee committed a type of pension fraud called pension spiking, where a person’s income is inflated at the end of their career in order to ensure a larger monthly payout. Based on the glowing things she said about Bill Hilson right before he gave his speech, I believe that this was a reward for doing a “good job” on my court case. 

I notified the California Auditor’s Office of this suspicious payroll incident. However, the Auditor’s Office is under the purview of the State Controller – Betty Yee at that time – and I believe that she squashed an investigation into herself. 

  • Betty Yee knowingly allowed FTB to violate multiple laws in order to fraudulently impose tax penalties. And remember point #2, that she made it unduly burdensome to dispute those fraudulently imposed penalties.  

Through records submitted by FTB in Grab vs FTB, I documented that FTB is running eight bona-fide criminal schemes to overcharge taxpayers.

Betty Yee was in charge when I first made the allegations that I had been ensnared in an unlawful embezzlement and racketeering scheme. She did not stop the scheme. She oversaw FTB when they violated my taxpayer rights by denying my abatement requests before I’d even submitted them. She oversaw FTB during my Office of Tax Appeal case, where FTB argued that I was willfully negligent and fabricated a false story, then improperly redacted and omitted documents to hide FTB’s accounting fraud, that FTB had unlawfully harassment me for monies that were never owed, and that I had contacted FTB 71 times to try to clear up the issues with the “missing” money. And she oversaw FTB during my SDSC case, the details of which were already summarized in #4 above. 

Based on her behavior detailed above and things she has said, I believe it is clear that Ms. Yee sees the collection of revenue so the state can use it for the “greater good” as more important than protecting the rights of constituents. My opinion is that we need a governor who will halt these unlawful schemes, not one who protects and supports them. 

The purpose of the Tesla Take-Down was to protest Elon Musk’s involvement in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was a government agency that had been repurposed by President Trump to identify and eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse” in government spending. 

I believe that some will view her involvement in the Tesla Take-downs positively and some will view it negatively. But her involvement in these protests is something we should all know in order to properly evaluate how we believe she will perform if elected governor. 

My personal opinion is that the reason that Yee wouldn’t open the books (see #1) was because she herself participated in waste, fraud and abuse. I believe Yee opposed DOGE because she feared the momentum would spread to California. I believe she wants to continue to hide what she did with California’s funds while she was State Controller. 

  • Betty Yee is married to a Jewish rabbi, who was apparently influential behind the scenes in her work. 

Betty Yee seems to focus her campaign rhetoric heavily on who she WAS – from her wikipedia page“Yee’s parents emigrated from Guangdong Province, China in 1956. She handled the books in her family’s neighborhood laundry and dry-cleaning business while she grew up. Originally speaking no English…” 

But she doesn’t say much about who she IS NOW. When Betty Yee termed out from being the State Controller, FTB had a going away ceremony. During the event, the several people mentioned that her husband, Rabbi Steven Jacobs, was a visible part of her work life. One of the Board Members, Regina Evans, indicated that Rabbi Jacobs was an important force behind the scenes in Ms. Yee’s work, and the other Board Member, Gayle Miller, seemed to concur. 

Why would Betty Yee downplay that she is married to a rabbi and that she is deeply religious? Why would she hide that he is influential in her work? Just like point #6, some people will think her religious stance is wonderful and will be eager to vote for her. Some people won’t think it’s wonderful and may not vote for her. But whatever people’s feelings about her religion influencing her work, people have the right to know that it does. In my opinion, she should be more forthright about this information with the public. 

  • Betty Yee has stated that she feels strongly that she needs to serve to help California and the world – but what does “help” mean?

In the remarks she gave at her going away ceremony, Betty Yee said:

“This is a pause. Service will always be a part of my life… I particularly want to thank my husband Steven for…understanding the demands of politics…and understanding that my…commitment to service is really a 24/7 commitment…  And service is always going to be an order, so this is a pause…Relative to the State of California, and we are a model, and we are a leader, for not just for the rest of the nation, but the rest of the world.” 

Based on the claim that service will always be an order, I believe she sees her political work as a spiritual calling. Yee also stated: 

“I’m so happy to see the House today sent a bill to President Biden codify marriage equality as a federal law. You know, these are all things that California was a leader in and um I hope that we continue to look at how tax policy as something that really embodies you know what is uh should be reflective of what our society is about and how we embrace uh all that is good and valuable in our society.”  

I believe this indicates that she believes that part of her spiritual calling is to push society in a certain direction and to use tax money to do so. Yee also stated: 

“…probably needs to continue to do that at a quicker clip, whether it’s about uh just how we transact business, how we uh look at with respect to some of our other taxes how we welcome new products into the marketplace…”   

Remember, she was talking to a tax agency whose “product” is taxes – she was saying that she wanted to see more types of taxes implemented. Californians already pay the highest state taxes in the entire country – and she wants to add more!

But where her speech got concerning was when she said:  

“The level of customer service that we provide at this organization is really one of the highest that I have ever seen and in fact, we’ve been the model for the IRS, so this is something…that I hope will continue to be a commitment for each and every one of us here…”

If you go back and read points #1, #2 and #5 above, it lays out exactly what she believes is “the highest” customer service: Accounting fraud in order to overcharge lawful taxpayers and run secret off-the-books spending accounts, accompanied by a systematic violation of rights in order to cover the exploitation of constituents. 

I believe that Betty Yee’s performance as State Controller indicates that her commitment to her ideology of increasing government and reducing constituent’s rights have repeatedly led her to behave unethically and/or to cover up for others behaving unethically. 

On the surface, it would appear a contradiction that a deeply religious woman would do such things. The reality is that it is not uncommon for religious people to believe that it is okay to violate ethics and morals in order to accomplish “God’s work” — that the ends justify the means. In my personal opinion, if ethics have to be compromised to accomplish an objective, then that objective is not truly God’s work. 

In summary, I believe that if he is elected Governor, Betty Yee will continue this pattern of unethical behavior in order to accomplish her ideological objectives. As discussed in points #1 – #5 above, this is how we can expect Betty Yee to behave as Governor:

  • Opacity in how the government operates, including hiding how money is spent (point #1)
  • Allowing and covering up accounting fraud, including temporarily embezzling money to fund off-the-books spending accounts and to falsely impose penalties, interest and fees (points #1 and #5)
  • Squashing constitutional rights in order to protect the accounting fraud schemes and unlawfully imposed tax liabilities (point #2)
  • Running social welfare programs that are ethically and lawfully questionable (point #3) 
  • Financially rewarding the people who cover up accounting fraud (point #4)
  • Creating political strife to try to stop transparency in government spending (point #6)