I come on at the 4-minute mark and we greet one another and talk about the previous episode we did together.
At 5:15, I give the background information about oath laws and explain why government employees choose not to take oaths.
At 6:30, I read the names of the legislators that the Secretary of State confirmed do not have a current oath on file for 2025 – 2026. Here are all of the oaths that I have collected. Scroll all the way down to nearly the bottom for the State Assembly and State Senate.
Summary: FTB has increased its budget by $35 million a year for customer service staff — but it doesn’t appear they’ve hired any more staff and their customer service numbers are getting worse.
2023: FTB Admits Failures and Increased Budget
In March 2023, FTB admitted that penalties and fees were being falsely imposed as a result of customer service failures. They didn’t outright say this, but they also implied that wage garnishments, liens and levies were also being falsely imposed due to these customer service failures.
FTB requested a $25.23 million per year budget increase in order to correct these customer service issues. FTB had stated that they intended to hire more customer service agents and give raises and bonuses to the existing staff.
I noticed that Transparent California has no information on the California State Senate employees. So I made a public records request and got some payroll data for the last 10 years. I have not had a chance to parse the data yet, and I am putting it out in the hopes that someone beats me to it. Happy information hunting!
Per the presentation, EDR2 is being rolled out one department at a time. One of the first departments to switch over to it was Collections. Here is a screenshot from the presentation in which they said that the new EDR2 software being utilized by the the Collections department “…will result in increased revenue…”
In the public comment time, I reminded FTB that I had documented in the Grab v. FTB court case that Collections agents Alexis Bear and Carrey Burton-Beilby had each directed me to send more money than the bill stated was due, then manually altered FTB records to make it appear that was always the amount due. In the court documents, I showed exactly how FTB “cooked the books.” Then I asked if the new EDR2 software allowed this manual inflation of balances due.
TLDR: In most counties, now is the time to apply to the civil grand jury. Serving on the civil grand jury is an amazingly powerful way to root out government corruption. Even if you can’t serve, you can contact the people who are on the civil grand jury and ask them to utilize their power to root out corruption.
The civil grand jury segment is from 14:30 – 32:00 of this video. From 4:45 – 14:30, I give an update on the oath situation: https://gwsandiego.net/blog/?p=3259. From 32:00 – 40:30, I talk about FTB’s $20 million scheme to hunt down low income people: https://gwsandiego.net/blog/?p=3185. From 37:00 – 41:00 we talk about CA’s opaque and questionable spending habits.
A colleague of mine, Richard Michael of Big Bad Bonds, has come up with a brilliant strategy for “we the people” to take back our constitutional power: restoring the power of civil grand juries.
Each county in California is required, at least once a year, to impanel at least one grand jury. Grand juries, historically, have jurisdiction over criminal matters. In California, however, the Legislature has mandated that the county grand juries must provide oversight over specific civil matters in the county (and cities/unincorporated areas within the counties), as well.
As Richard explained to me, the civil grand jury is incredibly powerful as they have the power to investigate corruption at county/city government agencies. However, the courts and district attorneys have figured out how to control and neutralize this power. Richard is encouraging us to take the power back.
This was originally posted on January 4, 2025 and has been updated a few times. The most recent update was in October 2025, where I uploaded more documents that I have yet to review. I’m hoping someone will beat me to it! On March 12, 2025 I also updated this post with more info on Golden State Opportunity Foundation. In September 2025, I also created a new post that has additional information.
September 2025 Update: At the September 8 board meeting, FTB stated that they “found” another $2 million for the Education and Outreach Program so total funding was $12 million for 2024/2025 in total. Obviously, the numbers they cited were off by half a million, and I have yet to clarify exact totals.
Background
In 2022, as part of the SENATE BILL 154 – BUDGET ACT OF 2022, the legislature ordered FTB to spend $20,000,000 of FTB’s budget “for outreach to create increased awareness of, and participation in, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program. These funds shall be allocated via contracts to nonprofit and community-based organizations. The participating nonprofit and community-based organizations shall particularly focus their outreach efforts on persons who file tax returns using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN) (page 9).”
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a tax credit that can be taken as a cash refund if the credit is more than the person’s tax liability. People who make less than $12,000 per year are not required to file a tax return; the EITC is a carrot to essentially pay them to file a return. ITINs are California’s equivalent to social security numbers that are issued to illegal immigrants (California is a sanctuary state).
Quick summary: I requested oaths on 100 people. It could be a mistake, but it looks like not one Assemblyman, State Senator or staffer filed oaths for the 2025 – 2026 legislative cycle. Lt. Governor Kounalakis also doesn’t have a current oath. I am asking you all for help to confirm whether or not oaths were filed.
For those that prefer video: here is an interview I did this morning. My segment starts at the 9-minute mark and goes to the 38:00 minute mark.
On January 31, 2025, I requested copies of oaths and bonds from the Secretary of State for 100 people, for many elected officials and deep state staff, including Scott Wiener: page 1, page 2 and page 3.
The SOS only takes payments via paper checks. I mailed a check right away, but it took a while to clear my bank. The SOS sent the response package via snail mail. The cover letter is dated February 10, but the package wasn’t mailed until February 19. I received it on Tuesday, March 4. Images of the cover letter are at the bottom of this post.
Interestingly enough, Scott Wiener and several others filed old oaths that were already expired. This indicates to me they are trying to cover their butts. However, the law clearly states that the oaths are to be filed within 30-days of taking office — to file an oath after it has already expired doesn’t change the fact that they were working unlawfully during that term.
Shockingly, it appears that of the 100 people that I requested oaths for, not a single oath has been filed for the 2025 – 2026 legislative term by State Senators, Assemblyman or their staffers. This could be an error. I sent an email to the SOS asking for confirmation that there are no current oaths filed. The SOS said it was possible there was a gap between the filing date and the SOS recording date. However, it is hard for me to believe that in the 4.5 weeks that had lapsed between the filing deadline and the SOS response, that all of them fell into that gap.
Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis also does not have a current oath on file. Since her oath was supposed to have to been filed in January 2022, she definitely did not fall into the gap. Prima fascia evidence indicates that the failure to file for this session is not an error:
One New Earth interviewed me about FTB’s corruption. We also talked about the devolution of the mortgage industry that I witnessed from 1996 – 2007, how I holistically cured a rare kidney disease that I developed after the birth of my child, and, of course, my efforts to have Scott Wiener’s legislative work voided.
Here are links to more information on some of the topics we talked about in this episode:
1:30 – 6:00 Recap of my government corruption fight – how I went from fighting against the California Franchise Tax Board to end schemes to overcharge taxpayers to fighting against the State Senate to have Scott Wiener vacated from office for working unlawfully without an oath.
