Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 1 on Education

Will come to order. This is the follow-up informational hearing for the oversight of the State Library's implementation of the Statewide Imagination Library. Our first oversight hearing over this issue was held on 03/12/2026. Since this hearing, we have received several documents, including invoices, additional bank statements, service agreements, and other backup documentation. The goal and the intent of the original state investment of $68.2 million in 2022 was to promote early literacy by increasing the number of young children receiving books through Dolly Parton's imagination library. And providing a state share to cover the cost of the books.

Under the stewardship of the stewardship of the state library in the first two years of the available $68,200,000 only $1,500,000 went to the Dollywood Foundation, which invoices show was used to pay for more than 1,000,000,000 books for children, and $4,800,000 went to the Strong Reader Partnership, a tax exempt nonprofit organization. The 2024 budget redirected the original investment to the Dollywood Foundation to develop the statewide Imagination Library.

Yet even after the 2024 budget action, the State Library did not allocate the full amount as directed by law, and the strong reader partnership continued to spend state funds. The bank statements and the financial expenditure detail report that we received helped paint a fuller picture of how $1,100,000 was spent by the Strong Reader Partnership. However, the set of documents we received raised deeper questions about what the funds were spent on.

We requested the participation of representatives from the Strong Reader Partnership and the State Library for this follow-up hearing today, as well as the participation of a few vendors who received state funds, including Shipyard, Lotus Financial Solutions, and United Way California Capital Region. Now I know we have representatives from both the Strong Reader Partnership and the state librarian, Greg Lucas, have both agreed, to join us today, and we have representatives, Sonia Harris, Jackie Wong, and Laura Fink from the Strong Reader Partnership.

So I wanna first of all thank you all for being here today. And I would like to start by first asking, that our state librarian, Mr. Lucas, if he could come forward for some questions, and then after that we will speak with the strong reader partnership.

Yes. I I believe it's on. Yes. Okay. We won't be doing opening statements just for purposes of time.

We only have this room for a set amount of time since this is a special hearing. Okay. Well, thank you, mister Lucas. First of all, I I want to acknowledge that you did send a demand letter to SRP last month in March, which helped us to receive the documents that we have today that we've been able to review, and I appreciate you doing that and taking action.

I know committee staff has also reached out and requested documents from the state library six times over not just this year, but last year as well.

And so I wanted to know how many other demand letters did you send to the SRP nonprofit in order to receive these documents?

The demand letter from March was the first and only demand letter we sent. We had multiple conversations with them as as you just said, madam chair, with the partnership to try and collaborate collaboratively work together to get the information that both the library and the subcommittee was looking for.

And where how were those communications done? Was that all via email? Were there phone calls?

I believe there were phone calls. I I know there were certainly emails, multiple emails.

And after several rounds of conversation, I know that this is something that went on for several months. You know, I'm I'm I'm a little troubled that it took us having a committee hearing in order for you to send a demand letter. I guess, you know, at at what point did you begin to escalate behavior in order to express the urgency of receiving those documents?

Well, I I will say to you, madam chair, in retrospect, we should have sent a demand letter earlier, but we've been working in partnership with the strong reader partnership. And in fairness to them, the members of the partnership are volunteers. At the at some of the period of time when we were waiting for responses, the executive director was on maternity leave. And as I say, we tried to resolve it as amicably as possible.

I also wanted

Go ahead. Sorry.

I also wanted to ask you about the final program narrative report that you had provided to us. So the Strong Reader Partnership stated that the State Library provided guidance to the partnership in October 2024 that the 4,800,000.0 that it already allocated to the partnership was not subject to redirection. Do you remember or or recall providing this communication to the Strong Reader partnership?

Yes. We had a legal we sought a legal opinion by our counsel, which said so long as the partnership continued to spend the money in furtherance of expanding the Dolly Parton imagination library in California, that that was satisfactory. And in furtherance of the activities that they outlined in their initial application.

So you sought an opinion from Ledge Council that the 4,800,000.0 was that was allocated to them was not subject to redirection. Is that correct?

No. This it was an opinion by the state library's council.

An opinion by the state library's council. And what was the direction and guidance that the state library provided to the strong reader partnership on AB 157 and how the $4,800,000 should be spent?

It's it's exactly what I just said, that if you continue to spend this money, it needs to be in the manner that was outlined in your application and in furtherance of the goals of expanding the Dolly Parton Imagination Library in California. Do you

know how many books do you estimate, mister Lucas, were provided to children on behalf of the Strong Reader Partnership, a nonprofit that you oversaw?

I I don't. I I do know that most of the work of the partnership before the money was redirected away from them was done in laying a foundation for a statewide program. As as you said earlier, madam chair, we we, the state library, gave a check directly to the Dollywood Foundation to help them buy some bilingual books at the beginning of the program because they had no cash to do that.

And I understand that the dollars provided to the Dollywood Foundation were used to purchase books, but was there any sort of accounting that you had of the number of books that were purchased by the Strong Reader Partnership?

Not not to my knowledge. Perhaps the partnership can answer that better.

Now the state library did not redirect at least 90% of the Imagination Library investment to the Dollywood Foundation even though it was required by law in AB 157. Why why was that the case, mister Lucas?

We directed 90% of the funds on hand, which is approximately $55,000,000 to the Dollywood foundation when they submitted the paperwork requesting it. They did not do that within the forty five day period set by the legislation, although we had a number of conversations with them about there's a forty five day timeline. So just to finish, so we provided the 55 we awarded them the $55,000,000 which was 90% of the funds that were on hand.

And then as is our policy, with every grantee or everyone that seeks use of public funds through the state library, We provided them with a percentage of it up front, right, which I think was 24, 25,000,000 in that range with the stipulation that the remaining 30 will be forthcoming when you demonstrate reaching the performance benchmarks that were mutually agreed to.

I wanna highlight something, mister Lucas, as we're having this conversation. I think both the last time, that you had attended a hearing as as well as during this discussion that there's there seems to be this constant issue coming up with the nonprofit Strong Reader Partnership that you're overseeing not meeting the deadlines that you're laying out, whether it's this forty five day deadline in order to redirect 90% of the finances, whether it's providing you with invoices or other documentation that you're requesting in a timely manner.

It concerns me because you're the agency providing oversight to them. So at what point were you communicating what the consequences would be, what the urgency would be to follow the law that's laid out in a bill such as AB 157 in order to meet these demands that are not just a rule that you're laying out. This is a law that the state legislature has passed and implemented and signed by the governor.

Thank you, madam chair. As as I said earlier, our legal counsel said that they the partnership could continue to spend the $4,800,000 that we had provided them so long as it was in furtherance of the activities that they outlined in their original grant and in expanding the Dolly Parton imagination library in California. When I've forgotten the bill number AB 157 was approved, we immediately contacted the Dollywood Foundation and said, we're going to provide you with 90% of the unspent funds.

You need to submit some paperwork to that effect. And when you do, we'll provide you the 90%, which we did, as I just said, the 55,000,000.

And I understand that that you had a misunderstanding about the 4,800,000.0 and what the bill was stating versus the advice that you were given by by counsel. But what I'm pointing out here is that you just acknowledge that SRP did not meet the forty five day timeline that was laid out. And in terms of these timeline issues, this is a chronic issue. Right?

And ensuring a nonprofit that you're overseeing is following the law, providing you documents in a timely manner, returning funds in a timely manner, and that is an issue of concern.

I'm gonna move on now to, a letter that we received from you, mister Lucas, dated 04/02/2026 that states that the state library received the final program narrative and the final financial expenditure detail report on Friday, 11/07/2025, and that after assessing the filings, the state library requested additional information on 11/12/2025 from the Strong Reader Partnership to better connect the financial expenditure detail to the activities conducted under the grant as described in the program narrative.

You know, I I wanna start off by first highlighting, you know, mister Lucas, by the time that we received this report from you, it was actually last month, we received this report from you on in March 2026. But you were saying that you received these documents in November 2025, which is almost five months after you received the documents. So why did the state library not provide these documents to the committee after it received them?

We received the final report of the activities of the partnership when they basically closed their operations in on 11/07/2025, And we followed up with as the demand letter, right, that we sent the other day says, we followed up with a conversation with them to provide us with additional documentation. So we received their final report. Yes.

We received a list of the ways that they had spent the money, but we sought additional information connecting those expenses, right, to the activities that were set out in the in the grant application and in the grant agreement.

But at what point, mister Lucas, did you think that it would be necessary to let committee staff know that you had received the final program narrative and that you received some documentation? I don't think that committee staff even had any idea that you had received a final program narrative and that you were seeking out additional documentation. That's almost five months that you were sitting on a report from the nonprofit before you provided it to committee staff.

I apologize for not providing it to committee staff. I mean, it is a public document, but you're right. We we should have forwarded it to you in a more timely manner.

Listen, I I I speak to this, mister Lucas, because again, the state library is acting as the overseer of this, right? And so when staff is requesting this information from you, if you're not communicating back, then we don't know what information that you've received. Our staff is depending on you to act as a facilitator of these conversations. Now what information, additional information, did the State Library receive to better connect the financial details to

that we received? Program narrative? Was it that all the invoices that we received last month? Is that is that what you were seeking out?

the activities described in the program narrative? Was it that all the invoices

Yes. We received the same thing that the subcommittee did, about 87 pages of bank statements, receipts, invoices, and and a narrative accompanying that that connected the spending with the the million dollars in spending, right, with the activities that were conducted by the partnership.

And is it your opinion that you received an adequate response to those requests that that information helped to connect the expenditure details to the grant activities?

Yes. There were a couple of small errors which the committee pointed out and which we noticed, but, yes, the materials that we've received are satisfactory and everything appears to be in order.

Now, mister Lucas, I wanna speak to, an issue that I noticed as I was going through the documents. Do you acknowledge that the contract between the strong reader partnership and state library explicitly stated that grant funds will not be used for lobbying or otherwise attempting to influence legislation?

The grant agreement specifically prohibits lobbying as defined by the Internal Revenue Service.

Well and your staff also acknowledged this as well. Right? On 10/13/2025, I believe that they also provided, information, to staff. I actually have the email here, from one of your staff members that also acknowledged this as well. Is that correct?

There's an email from October 13 where the subcommittee asked was any of this money to I want to say it's change craft maybe. There's a specific vendor and I can't recall the name, was used for lobbying and we reached out to the partnership and they said no, it wasn't. It was used for communications and, stakeholder outreach, which is what we reported to the subcommittee.

Well and that's, I think, part of my concern here, mister Lucas, because when I look at the change craft charges in particular, I find that the timeline of events, you know, appears that it is lobbying services. So it's $14,500 that were paid to ChangeCraft.

The billing period on that invoice was for a period of six days beginning on 08/24/2024, which coincides with the date that AB slash SB 157 went into print, and it ended on 08/29/2024, which coincides with the date that AB 157 was approved by the legislature. In addition to that, I also have emails here that ChangeCraft sent to budget staff on 08/25/2024 attempting to influence AB 157, and expressing concerns, about the bill.

Have you had an opportunity to look at any of these documents related to the change craft

As I read the contract, which was in the most recent batch of material that was provided to the subcommittee.

And so after reading that contract and also reviewing these emails from change craft, is it still your opinion that this is not engaging in lobbying or attempting to influence legislation?

You're gonna have to ask the partnership that, madam chair. It doesn't it doesn't appear to from reading the contract. There's certainly, the word lobbying doesn't appear in in there.

The word lobbying is not used in their contract, and I do have their contract here. And I understand that their contract states public affairs as well as, you know, other work that it outlines. But they are very clearly, in this document, reaching out to staff specifically to express concerns about SB 157 slash AB 157.

And because the change craft is not here, you know, won't get into naming names, but they reached out directly to budget staff in order to express their opposition to the bill.

As I say, the grant agreement that we signed with the partnership prohibits lobbying. We when you when the subcommittee asked us what was this money spent for, we we didn't have the contract in hand at that time. We reached out to the partnership and they told us what I just told you, which is that it was spent for communications and stakeholder outreach, which is what we then told the subcommittee in our email.

Mister Lucas, the state library is supposed to be overseeing this nonprofit providing guidance and in my opinion should be providing some of these guardrails and stopping when it sees behavior that appears to be violating what was set out in state law. And what was very clearly set out in state law is that these funds were not to be used for lobbying.

And so when you saw indicators that there was an appearance of lobbying, when you heard from committee staff that there was concern that funds were being used for lobbying, at what point did you or your staff think that it would be a good idea to reach out to SRP to express your concerns, or to highlight that this is not the way that funds were intended to be used?

We we reached out to them in October when you asked when the subcommittee asked whether the funds were used for some for lobbying, and they replied that it was not. They're also as I say, they're prohibited in the grant agreement from lobbying. So that's we both signed the state library signs that agreement, the partnership, or any grantee, in fact, right, that receives money from the state library. And those are mutually agreed upon parameters and terms and conditions.

Mister Lucas, moving forward, you know, I just wanna highlight that it's my expectation that the state library, when they are overseeing a nonprofit, that they are providing tighter oversight and accountability, you know, around these issues.

And if there are questions or concerns where it looks like a nonprofit entity that the state library is overseeing may be in violation of the contract or there's an appearance that there may be a violation of the contract that you all are taking action to communicate with the nonprofit and if there's uncertainty that you're working with staff to resolve some of those questions?

We we would take action if that were the case, and we do provide oversight. That's what this the final report process is about. Was the money spent in an appropriate manner? Was the money spent, right, in furtherance of what what you, the grantee, have proposed you're going to use it on? So that's that's part of what this process is, has has been determining, right, the appropriateness of the spending through the 87 pages of bank statements, receipts, and invoices.

And I I do want to highlight, mister Lucas, I've spent a lot of time going through these documents, and I have to note there is a real lack of information throughout these invoices. There's details that are lacking, and overall, we still do not have any sort of numbers or accounting for the number of books that were ultimately purchased and given to children. And that to me is really concerning.

Now we can speak to dollars that were given to the Dollywood Foundation, how those dollars actually led to books for children, but what I have yet to hear is how the strong reader partnership delivered on its commitment to providing books to children. And you've shared with me that you don't appear to have that information either.

Is that correct?

I did just say that. Yes.

And that is a concern here. So I'm going to go ahead and see if Senator Grove has questions and turn it over to her now.

Thank you. Senator?

Madam chair for inviting me again to participate. I appreciate your, due diligence on this, program. It was a very incredible program offering, a foster of love to learn to read in English and in Spanish, and I just appreciated working with my counter part, this is a former pro tem, who I hopefully is watching online. Mister Lucas, I wanna thank you for providing the documents that the committee had requested several times, and I appreciate them there, but I think they were pretty vague.

In the real world, I'm a business owner and I have a CFO that takes care of the financial pieces.

When I ask for a document, it comes with details, receipts attached. It your the documents that I feel like you provided this committee were very, very vague. And then I have some questions on the success of the program. You provided documents, that said, for instance, dollars 581,708.55 for shipyard, but the documents don't provide, don't provide information on any detail whatsoever. There's not very much detail or what's acceptable.

Shipyard, it's a full service advertising agency. Right?

Yes. That that a number of state agencies contract with.

And you the program that you oversee, that you oversaw and has the strong reader program, this program was allocated $581,708 I just want to make sure we understand that, and 55¢. And what do you think that was used for?

That was used to help establish the foundation, and the the partnership could speak to this with more detail. But in reading the materials, it was it was the contract was designed to set up a statewide program to help expand the Imagination Library in California.

Which would include a website and social media and things like that because they're an advertising outreach agency?

I I believe that was part of the marketing plan. Yes. But as as I say, the partnership can speak to that with more detail.

But speaking to you, sir, mister Lucas, because you oversee this program, do you have measurable goals that you would attribute to anybody who gets a contract in use of state money and a program that you oversee? Are there goals you would expect for spending $581,708.55 Is there a goal you would expect to happen?

Of course. Any person who seeks a grant or money from the state library, right, fills out an application and says, here's what we're gonna do with the money if you give it to us. Right? We review that, and then we give them a portion of the money, and we sign a an agreement, and then there's benchmarks and progress reports that are established as part of signing that agreement. Right?

And if you don't meet them, we don't we don't send you more money.

Okay. So are you saying that there was only a lump sum of 587 or excuse me, $581,000.700 excuse me, $551,000.

That's the total amount that was paid.

Total amount.

Was that done in increments or was it done as a lump sum?

I'm sorry.

I I don't know whether it was paid in increments or a lump sum.

But based on your testimony that you just said, you give a money that you just said, you give a portion of the total dollar amount to an organization who applies for this grant, then they give you measurable goals that they say they're going to meet, and then you check to make sure they're meeting those goals before you release more taxpayer dollars to them. Basically, that's what you just said.

That is true.

Okay. So, I'd like to find out if you if this 500 this dollar amount, this total dollar amount of $581,708.55, if that was in a one lump sum, was it the first portion of it, or was it divided and they earned and met those metrics that you felt were satisfactory, and then you additionally gave them more money which included is included in this total?

The Strong Reader Partnership submitted an application for $19,000,000, which we approved. Right? We sent them 4,800,000.0 as a initial upfront payment.

Okay.

Right? Of of the 4.8, 3.7 was returned to the state, and they spent a million dollars, of which a portion of the million dollars is that contract with shipyard. So whether we then we, at the end of the period, right, the grant period, they submit a final report and we look at that and see how the money was spent. Okay. I cannot tell you whether it was a lump sum payment to shipyard or multiple payments.

The partnership certainly can.

Okay. I'll ask them when they come up here. Overseeing this program, again, I'm just using my business background and what I do. If we set a goal to accomplish something in the business and we we measure those goals as we move forward, if I was to authorize somebody on my staff to spend that amount of money on digital media and marketing, I would expect some type of return on my investment. Would you feel the same way?

Absolutely.

So with this $581,708.55 that was used for social media, social media channels, creating marketing, outreach and social media contact for multiple language developed in multiple materials and public relations activities, primarily earned media and social media. Social media, would you consider Instagram social media?

I consider Instagram yes, I suppose.

Do you think giving a contract to a media corporation, shipyard for $581,708.55 of state taxpayer resources to create a social media program with 12 followers is a good use of taxpayer resources?

Senator, the funding that went to the partnership was to create the foundation for a statewide program. The administration of the program was shifted so that all of the funding, 90% of the unspent funding, was to be sent to the Dollywood Foundation directly, which which has happened.

I understand.

Sorry. I was just gonna

Go ahead. Sorry, sir. You go ahead.

Oh, well, I was just gonna say, so the initial work that was done by the partnership never came to fruition because they the money was returned to the state. So if you're saying what's the return on this investment

Right.

That there there was no return because they couldn't complete the work or begin doing what the grant or to complete the work that they had in the grant program because the money was was removed from them.

Okay. Let's talk about just the $1,100,000 that you did receive or that the the program the strong reader program that you created over this in the state library that you oversaw. Let's just talk about the $1,100,000 not the money that they got, the 4.8, and then the balance of it was re reverted back. Out of that $1,100,000 they spent almost $600,000 on developing social media. In that social media, you have an Instagram page for the strong reader program that has 14 followers.

There's no web page. There's no multiple languages. There's nothing that says what you said the contract in the shipyard was allocated for. In that $1,100,000 this program that was authorized by the legislature, signed by the governor, was to foster a love for reading in English and Spanish to to one to five year olds, a zero to five year old, so that they could be ready for kindergarten or TK. Okay?

It was to allow them to read. Out of that $1,100,000, what was the total grants given for people to provide books, nonprofits, out of the reader program? How much money was given to people to actually provide good books to kids? Just the 1,100,000.0.

How much of I'm sorry. I'm

The grant. How many grants did you give out on giving

much of the grant 1,000,000 was actually spent on providing more books?

Children books.

Yeah. I don't that's as I said, I I don't believe any of it was, but the partnership can speak to that better. When we were working with the Dollywood Foundation prior to the establishment of the partnership, the book purchases are primarily done by the foundation. I don't know if that can continued to be the case.

How many books did the strong reader program provide?

I I don't know. They can answer that question for you as as as I said. I don't think that the grant that they applied the grant that they applied for was to establish a foundation for a statewide program that would expand the number of kids who would be getting books. I don't they did not get to the second phase. They did not get to sort of turn the light switch on the work that they had done to establish that initial foundation or platform.

Okay. So I'll just, read the information that I have since you don't have it. Since you oversaw the program, I did not. I was part of the the the I was one of the authors of the bills, but

oversee the program. You did, and it was under your authority to make sure that this program operated correctly. There was one grant given out for $5,000. One, out of $1,100,000. I'm not talking about the money you sent back.

we didn't

I'm talking about the money that you allowed to go to the strong reader program that you set up, you created. And I appreciate you sending your staff over to share with me that my ledge aid had offered you several emails in coordination when this bill was being referred to because you opposed this program from the very beginning and we were trying to offer solutions to help you administer this program.

And one of the things was is that maybe you could look at creating a nonprofit and there were two other alternatives that were brought in forth, but the final iteration of this bill and I'll get back to that $5,000 in just a second, the final iteration of this bill that was signed by the governor passed by the legislature, the state librarian, which is you, shall coordinate with a nonprofit entity. It doesn't say create one. It says coordinate with one.

Qualified under the section 501 c 3, the internal revenue code, and organized solely for to promote and encourage reading by the children of the state for the purposes of implementing this article. It didn't say and I realize those words are, like, kinda, you know, similar, create and coordinate, but did it not allow you to create your own nonprofit program for the state library and spend $1,100,000 of taxpayer money with no return on your investment, whether it was a beginning or an end.

You issued one the strong reader program, the program that you created, issued one $5,000 grant to support the legislation out of $1,100,000, one $5,000 grant. In comparison in comparison to that, for the $1,500,000 on the September 23 that you gave the Dollywood Foundation and, in April 2023, the California State Library, for $1,500,000 it covered the cost of more than 1,000,000 books.

So your nonprofit that you created and you contracted with gave it a $5,000 grant for $1,100,000 in money that you gave to that nonprofit In comparison to giving Dolly Parton Foundation 1,100,000.0 excuse me, $1,500,000 and they issued a million books and enrolled almost 163,104 children and at the end of the program that they got that money, which is a total of almost $3,000,000 that was referred back to them, 2,900,000 books were issued in English and Spanish in the state of California.

Do you think that the strong reader program with their $1,100,000 and the $5,000 grant issued to provide books with no accountability of how many books were provided for was a good use of taxpayer dollars?

Senator, I don't we did we did not create the nonprofit. We worked with the Dollywood Foundation. We provided them with the proposed bylaws. We worked in concert with them. The model that happened in California was one that the Dollywood Foundation has used in other states in implementing the Dolly Parton Library.

Who created the strong reader program where the $1,100,000 went?

What we've accounted for where the $1,100,000 went?

Who created it?

Who we created it in the state of California, the state library working with the Dollywood Foundation and in and in conjunction with the legislature.

So I I guess you I just asked one more time, I'll ask you the question. You created the state library. We, as in meaning you, the state librarian, and you created that strong reader program instead of just using the Dolly Parton Foundation. You spent $1,100,000 or you authorized the, you authorized and provided a grant to the strong reader program of taxpayer dollars for $1,100,000. And out of all of that, they provided one reading grant to one nonprofit for $5,000 out of the $1,100,000 they received.

Do you think that's a good use of taxpayer dollars in conjunction with what the intent of this legislation this legislation was?

The intent of the legislation, Senator, as you as you know, you authored it. It was to expand the Dolly Parton library into California and be cognizant of the things that make California unique.

Do you think it was a good use of taxpayer dollars to provide one the nonprofit the state librarian set up? Do you think it was a good use of taxpayer dollars to give one grant for $5,000 out of a $1,100,000 grant.

As I understand it, the partnership was unable to provide additional grants because the money was transferred to send it directly to the Dollywood foundation.

Sir, the Dollywood Foundation for $1.51500000.0. Now I realize it's $400,000 more than what the strong reader program got. They, in September 23, provided 85,401 children were enrolled in the program and provided 46,500 new enrollees and a total of 52,000 and delivered almost a million books for $1,500,000.

The program that you created on behalf of the state librarian and the organization that you partnered with or that you created and put on the board, they got just $400,000 less than that, $1,100,000 and they provided one grant for $5,000 And you don't see and I've asked you three different ways and I'm trying to be very nice about this. And you you don't I'm asking you, do you think spending $5,000 on the intent of this program out of $1,100,000 is a good use of taxpayer money?

Yes or no?

What? Yes. It is. You think so you think every taxpayer that we represent, our taxpayers in the state of California, would be okay with spending $1,100,000 in taxpayer money to provide one nonprofit with a $5,000 grant to provide books to children to learn to read. In contrast, let me ask you this. Do you think the success of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library and the Dollywood Foundation that provided, that got $1,500,000 and provided enrolled 85,401 children and then also distributed almost 2,900,000 books.

Do you think that that is a better success than the statewide program that you created?

Are you sticking to your guns that the $5,000 that you that this nonprofit allowed out was a great success on behalf? Why aren't we touting that on social media if we're so proud of that?

The two the two expenditures were for different things. So the Dollywood Foundation came to us and said, we need some money to purchase these bilingual books. Right? They had committed to providing books in both English and Spanish as part of the program, which is very cool.

It's not what I asked you, sir.

But if I could answer, I maybe I can answer your question. There was a $19,000,000 application application from the strong reader partnership of which there were several phases. The first phase was to lay this foundation for a state program. Before that could come to fruition, the money was transferred away to the Dollywood Foundation. So the investment that was made in establishing a program, right, that would expand the Dolly Parton library in California, I think was a sound investment.

I think the partnership can better answer your question about the $5,000 grant and why there were not more.

The chair of this committee and I represent California's chair are very diverse and we represent very diverse districts, from one side to the other side of the aisle.

But I can almost 100% speak in unison, I believe, with the chair and not speaking with her, that her constituents nor my constituents or any other people in the state of California would agree with you that giving you $1,100,000 to give out to another a nonprofit that provided one $5,000 grant to provide books for children to read would be a good investment or return on an ROI or return on their investment for using stack taxpayer dollars.

In contrast with the Dollywood Foundation that put this together and issued over a million books for roughly the same amount of money and enrolled, several, 64,000 kids into the program. And you're saying you're really I mean, and I, I you're looking at me with a straight face with all due respect, and you're telling me that that investment of taxpayer dollars of what you did with the southern nonprofit you created was a good investment for the state of California. And I completely disagree with you.

Respectfully disagree with you because you can't there's no way and I guess that's the mishap of government. Right? You think spending $1,100,000 and having a $5,000 return on your investment is significant. That's maybe why we're completely in deficit in the state of California because people operate like you in the state government. I have questions for the individuals that are on the board when they come up, but I am really disappointed in the questions and the response

that you got. And to be the head

of the state library as the state librarian and oversee, I think you said, a $900,000,000 budget, was it 900 or 90,000,000 in the last committee? You said you oversee a budget of how much money? Total, not just this program.

There's about $600,000,000 annually in grants that move through the state library.

Okay. Dollars 600,000,000 in grants. Out of that $1,000,000.5000 was used to benefit the state of California. Dollars 5,000. If you oversee $600,000,000 on that ratio, the state library is in big trouble.

That's just completely unacceptable. But thank you for being here today to respond to our questions. Thank you, Madam, for the time.

Thank you, Senator Grove. Mister Lucas, I first of all want to acknowledge that you you did respond to our request as I mentioned before in helping to deliver these documents. But I am troubled and concerned that it took us having a committee hearing and going through a round of questions in order for us to receive these documents.

You know, I wanna highlight what Senator Grove mentioned, which is, you know, you are a you are leading a state agency, a massive state, you know, the state library is no small endeavor, and you just acknowledge yourself there's $600,000,000 that you're overseeing and managing there. I recognize that this is a small program by comparison, but it is still your responsibility to provide oversight and accountability.

There were two years of time that this money was allocated to the Strong Reader Partnership from 2022 until 2024. And in that time period, we do not have any sort of accounting for what books were provided to children. And there was $1,100,000 spent, and you've said it's to lay the groundwork and foundation to set up this program.

But you don't have any sense of the timeline of the work that they were doing, of when those deliverables were coming to fruition, whether or not there was a single book provided to a child. I also want to underscore something as well because I decided to look into the $5,000 grant that was expended to the United Way at the California capital, and we requested that information specifically from United Way as well as from the strong breeder partnership.

Have you looked at all into the $5,000 grant and to see how it was used or how that money was applied?

Yes. We looked at the receipt of it. Right.

Well, did you see how those funds were actually used to meet the overall goal of the program, which was providing books to students?

In the narrative that was provided by the partnership, yes.

Because the documents that were provided to us is a $5,000 grant via check was for net paid media meta ad placements. Now I'm very familiar with meta ads because I've ran for office. So meta ads actually stay online for about ten, fifteen years. You can see my ads from when I ran for city council. You can see my ads when I ran for this seat, and you can also see ads that were deleted.

I went to the ad library. Anybody can access it by just going on to Facebook, And there are only three ads that have ever been posted by United Way California Capital Region, and the last live advertisement was in 2024. This program was supposed to go into effect in June 2025. So the intended purpose that was stated in this document, which is that this was to be used for advertising for this program, it it never even came to fruition. There's no receipt of it online.

The partnership can speak to that.

And I understand that, mister Lucas. But as was mentioned before, as as somebody that is in an appointed position, who is overseeing a program, who's trusted with overseeing taxpayer dollars, there needed to be more oversight and accountability here. And the fact that you are not able to provide us with answers and you don't have a better understanding of what happened with this program, I think, is really concerning. And I know there's numerous other programs that the state library manages and oversees.

And I think it's our priority to make sure that those taxpayer funds are being used responsibly.

And I hope you can understand and agree with that, mister Lucas.

I hear you, Senator.

Thank you. I appreciate you being here, mister Lucas. I appreciate you assisting getting us these documents.

Thank you.

So next, I'd like to call up, the members of the strong reader partnership that we have with us here today, and that includes miss Jackie Wong, miss Sonia Harris, and miss Laura Fink. Hi. I thank you all for being here, and appreciate you joining us. I'll start off by asking a round of questions, and then again, we'll turn it over to Senator Grove.

First and foremost, you know, I think it would be helpful for us to understand what was the process for the Strong Reader Partnership used to select the vendors that it worked with.

I know that we have several vendors that you all worked with here. Shipyard who was hired, it looks like for both communications as well as web and digital services, $581,000, $326,000 to Sage Strategies, as well as a $110,000 to Lotus Financial Solutions. So what was the process that you all used to select these vendors and, and ultimately to determine who you'd be working with?

So I wanted to say good morning and thank you for having us, Senator Grove, chair Perez. We're happy to be here today to provide clarity to the committee. We have an opening statement, I understand, but I think we'll provide some clarity if that's something you're interested in.

If you can respond to the question, that would be excellent.

I'm happy to do that. So our process for evaluating vendors and allocations, we were a working board. So I was appointed by former pro tem Senator Tony Atkins and we were all appointed to the board from various legislatures and other places. So our charge was audacious. Our job was to get books in the hands of 2,200,000 kids and to develop an agency and an institution that was long standing and self sustaining.

We needed to be self sufficient over the course of the year. So we, our job was to lay the groundwork and infrastructure. So part of that as a working board, obviously we were in start up mode, and so we were able to evaluate contracts collectively together based on that mission and building that infrastructure.

May I ask you to ask the witness to introduce themselves, initially for the record?

Yes, absolutely. If you all and I apologize, Senator Grove if you all wouldn't mind introducing yourselves for a moment. I'm sorry I'm mindful of the time we have in this room.

I understand. My name is Laura Fink. I am a board member of the strong reader partnership appointed by Senator Tony Atkins, former pro tem.

My name is Jackie Wong. I am the chair of the strong reader partnership, and I was appointed by the governor of the state California state labor.

Good morning, senators. My name is Sonia Harris. I'm the former executive director of strong reader partnership, and I also serve as the chief executive officer of sage strategies.

No. Of course, Senator Grove. So the process then, was there an RFP process? Or what was the process that was used then to ultimately select the vendors?

Which vendor are you speaking about?

All of the vendors. Is there a different process for each vendor that you selected?

No. There's not a different process. We would meet collaboratively as a board and discuss and receive the documentation, and we also were were able to interview Board Members or excuse me, potential contractors as well. Multiple vendors.

So I wanna ask a little bit about Lotus Financial Solutions who was selected to do bookkeeping services. And just so we can overview a little bit here from the committee report that was provided to the public, it's a $110,000 to Lotus Financial Solutions, an Oakland based bookkeeping service to record and manage all financial transactions in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, including the setup of financial systems to support a multimillion dollar grant administration dispensing of subgrants and high volume of payments over time.

Now in addition to the Lotus Financial solution, bank statements and invoices, there's also another three additional companies that are providing financial management services to the nonprofit. $1,399 in total was paid to Intuit QuickBooks. So QuickBooks was also used.

$1,962 was paid to Bowman and Company. According to the Strong Reader Partnership, $13.25 dollars was paid to all about taxes. So I, I would like to better understand why did the strong greeter partnership hire four separate vendors for its financial management?

I'm happy to speak to that, Senator. Lotus financial serves as intended to serve as the back of house for the operation. So as stated earlier, the grant in total contemplated a 19,000,000 sort of program that did include hard costs associated with book purchases, as well as all of the operations, of the nonprofit. So Lotus sort of was intended to be sort of our financial services back of house. The three additional vendors were identified to support that work.

With regard to the Intuit related expenditures, typically, we would want to own the data that were housing related to, you know, expenses and such. So that was why QuickBooks was utilized. The second vendor, All About Taxes, was used for tax preparation services.

While Lotus did have the responsibility for financial back of house, as well as ten ninety nine preparation, similar to what would be, you know, a W-two of sorts, and actually preparing the documents for the tax person to then, you know, prepare the nine ninety filing. The last that you called out was an independent auditor.

Per

requirements, organizations, five zero one c threes that receive more than $2,000,000 in revenue in any given year typically would undergo an audit to ensure that all of the appropriate controls are in place. On balance, the four vendors were also chosen to ensure we had some checks and balances on different vendors to make sure, of course, accountability of funds.

So when Lotus Financial Solutions was selected to provide its bookkeeping services, did you not also ask them if they were able to provide tax prep services, if they were able to ensure that you all would own your own data as you stated, which is why you used Intuit QuickBooks. What was the process that was used to select Lotus, and why did Lotus not meet the needs that SRP had?

Thank you for the question, Senator. As I mentioned, Lotus was intended to be the back of house to keep all expenditures, and that was separate, from actual tax preparation services, tax preparation and submission.

So you felt as though Lotus could not meet all of the needs that you all had, which is why you had to hire three other financial management services.

Thank you for the question. The actual tax preparation submission was outside of their scope of work.

Now I wanna underscore we've been requesting documents from you all for a very long time, and you've received as you've acknowledged multiple communications from the state library. Is that correct?

That's correct.

And there were six requests that went out from this committee staff for documents. Did you all receive six requests? And I know that those dates were listed in this hearing's agenda, but they were listed in the first one that was posted on 03/12/2026, and those dates were 11/05/2025, 11/13/2025, 12/03/2025, 01/05/2026, 01/22/2026, and 02/17/2026. So were you aware of committee staff's request for those documents?

We were aware of state library's interaction with us, which we've detailed, in line item all of the communications that we had with the state library over that period. I can't speak to your communication with the state library.

So if you all have four vendors that are doing financial management, why were you not able to produce invoices or bank statements for almost five, six months?

We appreciate the question and we understand the concern. As stated earlier by the state library, we're amidst of transition, and we wanted to make sure that we actually had a complete set of documents for which you have now, and we appreciate your patience and grace as we collected those documents.

I'm sorry. You're going to need to repeat that again because you mumbled through the end of that. What was the reason? Can you state that again? That you were not able to provide documents despite having four different vendors?

We're in the middle of transition and and had to cancel a lot of our our vendors and our support, and so we were a working board that no longer had those supports available to us. And so it took a bit of time to ensure that we collected those those, invoices that you had requested. So again, we appreciate your grace and your patience as we were collecting and wanting to make sure that we had a comprehensive set of documentation that you now have.

I would also say a lot of the some of the documents were outside the scope. I wanted to sort of make sort of separate the financial vendors from the, documents that were requested. So for example, one was a bank statement. A bank statement we hadn't received yet, so we waited to receive it from the bank and we submitted that bank statement.

Invoices that we as was mentioned earlier, Sonia was on leave, we were a volunteer board that had been defunded and so we were all working to collect that documentation, all of the individual invoices from all of the vendors, all of the documentation that was required.

So, again, we regret the lack of timeliness, but we hope that you have what you need today. And we've worked with alacrity in the last several weeks to ensure that you do.

When was the nonprofit established? Do you remember the time period when the nonprofit was established?

In 2023.

And what was stated in the agreement that you signed with the library? What was the role of the nonprofit?

I'm happy to answer that, and I believe that the our grant application is in there. So what we knew is that we needed to build an institution that was financially and independently self sustaining. Our priority was to build a program that embraced California's diverse multilingual communities in every single aspect of our work. We have been committed to enrolling the hardest to reach kids, right, the multilingual kids, those hardest to reach.

The Dolly Parton imagination library program model, I think it's important to understand, required that our expansion be exclusively through a network of local CBOs and public entity partners.

These local organizations will be tasked with local outreach and enrollment as well as financing half the cost of the books. So local, again, the locals had to build a match that was up to $60,000,000 Our role essentially was to support that local infrastructure, help communities, meet the requirements and build towards a long term sustainability after the state's initial investment.

Our work was intended not only to support implementation during the state's five year investment as I said, but also to strengthen that local capacity so the program could continue beyond the duration of the state funding because this is a really locally driven program. It's not one entity. It was not just us.

It wasn't just, dollywood foundation. It wasn't just the library. The model itself is a collective impact model where all of us needed to get behind the local communities to to support sustainability and to get these books into the hands of kids because there is a real hard cost to the locals, a $1 per $1 match.

So the contract required that the strong greeter partnership to, among other things, administer the dollar for dollar match and provide quarterly financial and activity reports every three months. So I wanna repeat that again. Quarterly financial and activity reports every three months. And so what you're sharing with me is that you all were not producing that. And so by the time that those reports were produced, it was at the end of this period.

You were not doing this on a quarterly basis.

Senator, that's correct. And but I will say this. We provided every document, every we met every requirement of the California state library. When our reporting when we submitted our report in September, we answered every question that the state library asked of us and provided every document that they requested of us at that time. So we have been in compliance as far as we know in our communication with the California state library and, you know, and it is our and Jackie did you want to say that?

That's a very fair question. We were in regular communication with the California state library. We had verbal communication. We had email communication. We requested forms, because states have regular reporting forms, and requested those of the state library in the course of the time we existed.

I'm going to be honest with you all. I disagree when you say that you are meeting the contract requirements that were established with the state library. If you are not providing quarterly financial activity reports every three months, that is not meeting the contract requirements that were laid out. There were no. You had a a mission.

There were two goals that were laid out in that contract, and you did not meet one of them.

Respectfully, Senator. We did request for reporting structure and documentation from the California State Library, and we were not given the mechanism by which to report quarterly.

So you requested a mechanism to be able to report to the state library and the state library did not provide you with one. Okay. I'd like to get into our next piece here, which is what we were discussing earlier in regards to the change craft invoice that begins on 08/24/2024, the day AB157 went into print, until 08/29/2024, the day that the legislature approved AB157. $14,500 was paid to ChangeCraft for what its invoice describes as stakeholder materials and communication services.

But as the agenda notes, the committee received outreach from ChangeCraft on August 25 and August 2024 with proposed amendments to AB157.

I also want to note that the contract between the Strong Reader Partnership and the State Library explicitly states that grant funds will not be used for the purpose of lobbying or otherwise attempting to influence legislation. Were you all aware and are you all aware of language in the contract that explicitly states that grant funds are not supposed to be used for lobbying or influencing legislation?

Yes.

And so what would you call the ChangeCraft services then that were utilized for AB157?

Stakeholder engagement and communications. I also want to clarify the record is that chain craft did not do this, did not bill us for their communications with the subcommittee. And I'm not sure if they're here today. I know you invited folks to talk about that. But that was not part of our contract.

And we do understand noted that they reached out to you.

And Chase Craft is not here, but we do have communication from them attempting to influence legislation and influence AB157.

You know, I don't want to speculate, but I would imagine that they have other clients as well that may have been interested in that advocacy.

And generally, I understand that they do this on do this, because they're passionate about the issue.

So there was no communication between you all and change craft to recruit them for services to try to influence AB157?

That is correct. That is correct.

And I do wanna highlight that I've submitted a letter to you all as well as to the state library asking you all to retain documents related to

this matter.

Now, I have further questions in regards to lobbying services, and this is particularly from miss Sonia Harris. Miss Harris, the committee has communication from you in August 2024 from your imagination library California.org email address with opposition letters and proposed amendments to AB157. It's our understanding that you are not an employee of the partnership, but instead your firm, Sage Strategies. Build the partnership for your and your staff's time providing management consulting services.

Were any of the hours billed to the partnership by Sage Strategies in August 2024 or September 2024 for your time spent on advocacy efforts with the legislature, the governor's office, or other state agencies to oppose and amend AB157?

Thank you for the question, Senator. I would have to go back to double check records to ensure that they were not. But in the instance that you mentioned, I was communicating on behalf of the board, as we understood the dollars would be redirected.

Now, Sonia, here I have invoice your invoice sheet from August 2024. And, you know, this is actually a frequent issue that I find not just with your invoicing, but with a lot of the invoicing that you all have retained, which is that it lacks details. I was a consultant before I came into this role. I had the pleasure of working on Prop one. I've worked for California Calls and with other agencies.

And so in that process, have had to produce my own invoices. And I am a little surprised by the lack of description. All you have here is a first initial, last name, date, and then hours, and that's it. There's no details in terms of the work that was done, and so whether or not any of these individuals that are working for you in Sage Strategies are lobbying or not, I have no idea because there's no details in regards to any of the work that they performed.

It just looks like over time, you charged in the month of August $43,500 for that work, and that's all the details that I have.

Is this how you typically do your invoicing?

Yes. You know, over the course of different contract terms, typically the individual, the total hours worked, hourly rate.

Do you understand why committee staff and I would be concerned that it appeared that you were lobbying to oppose AB157, and that during that same period that you sent billing to the nonprofit, while it appeared that you were lobbying and sending in letters to oppose SB157, AB157?

The invoice that you referenced, Senator, encompasses all of the work for the month, in administering all the day to day activities on behalf of the board.

Yes, miss Harris. But it also appears that you're attempting to influence legislation when it's explicitly stated that you are not supposed to use state taxpayer dollars to do so.

Do you agree? Thank you, Senator. Again, the documentation involves all of the day to day management and as directed by the board, I did submit information to the committee.

Miss Harris, you sent over a number of letters from folks including from the first five California, which I understand, you know, miss Jackie Wong represents as well. United Way of California Capital Region, Israel's Read to Me Stockton, and the San Diego Council on Literacy in opposition to AB157. Were you meeting with other offices with this documentation as well in order to oppose AB157 and SB157?

I would need to go back to double check, Senator. I believe we did drop off letters to offices to two offices.

Moving on, Miss Harris, because I have more questions related, to some of the work that was held with your firm, Sage Strategies. When did Sage Strategies start using 1414 K Street, Suite #620 as its primary business address?

February of, Jan, January of 2024. I'm sorry, 2025.

January of 2025. Is that correct?

Correct.

Do you have any sort of detailed summaries about the work that Sage Strategies performed for its billing period? Are all of the invoices? It looks like everything that we've received so far lacks details. Do you have anything that summarizes work that was completed over this monthly, weekly time period?

In routine conversations with the board, as Laura mentioned in, being a working board, we had regular communication on the work product over the period of time of the contract.

But is any of that information documented?

Yes.

Have you not provided that to committee staff?

I believe we've required, responded with, what was asked.

So far, I have not seen any sort of detailed summary. So if you have additional documents, Miss Harris, that would be helpful. Now, I understand that you've not provided the minutes, but there is a real lack of detail in terms of work that was performed over this time period. Now Miss Wong and Miss Fink, we were told that the board made all decisions about expenditures and signed the checks to pay for invoices.

The invoices for Sage Strategies, Shipyard, and Lotus Financial Solutions have details on build hours, but little else. So are these types of invoices with little detail on deliverables for the billing period acceptable to the board?

Did you raise concerns? And are these invoices, do you consider them to be satisfactory to maintain the partnership's tax exempt status?

Doesn't matter.

Okay, I'll start, then you can finish.

Go ahead.

Well, as I mentioned earlier, we were a working board. So we were involved in the day to day operations. We were deeply aware of the work that our contractors were doing. We were deeply aware, in particular of Sage Strategies and the support that they were providing. So because we had so much input and oversight, we, we felt apprised of all of the work.

We were, we're working hand in hand together, with Sonia and her team to execute and to do the work that was required of us. So this was a, was a true partnership and one in which I would say, it was more than, than financial oversight. We had more involvement than most nonprofit boards would have with their executive director and with the team.

Adding on to that level of engagement, on, on a regular basis with the entire board, we felt that the invoicing was sufficient.

I want to share with you all that I do not feel that it's sufficient at all. Instead, it's left more questions about what work was done during this time period, especially when we still don't have an accounting for how these dollars were actually utilized to get books into the hands of children. And as far as I've seen here in reviewing all of the documents that you've provided to staff, you all don't have an accounting or metric of that either, and that's deeply concerning.

And so there needed to be more documentation here because we're dealing with state taxpayer funds, rather than just providing hours worked and what the ultimate cost of those hours are. Now, in the California State Library Grant Report, the Strong Reader Partnership states that the grant was placed on hold in late August 2024, at which point we were asked to update the scope of work and work was paused.

The report then indicates that work resumed in April 2025. However, Sage Strategies billed 109 hours between September through November 2024 for $24,145 and 77.75 hours between December 2024 through March 2025 for $19,700. This is a total of nearly 187 hours worked for $43,845 during a period of time that the Strong Reader Partnership reported that work was paused.

So what work was completed by Sage Strategies between September 2024 and March 2025, and how did this work further implement the statewide Imagination Library to deliver books to children?

That's a very fair question, so we appreciate it. So, thank you very much. During that time, we needed to get clarification from the State Library about how to proceed, and that is the work that Sage Strategy was doing on behalf of the board.

So Sage Strategies was working on receiving clarity from the State Library for 187 hours?

I think that was certainly part of it, and we would have to go back to our records to examine and, and discuss the work that was done. I would say in particular, that transition was difficult. When you, it came sort of out of the dark that we, our funding was revoked, and we had relationships with local partners. We had, evaluations. We had a lot of work that needed to be sustained in the interim.

And I also want to add that we worked in parallel and in partnership with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, So we were working alongside them for every book that was delivered. And so I think we want to be clear that our role really was in a supportive capacity, in, in a capacity expansion, in building infrastructure, and we didn't want to pause all of that, with the revocation of funding.

And part of that was actually meeting with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library to ensure that whatever transition needed to take place, was, was smooth and was efficacious.

So I want to speak to that a little bit because you raised that you all were working in partnership with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. And our staff reached out to the Dollywood Foundation and to the Dolly Parton Imagination Library last year, 10/10/2025, and they provided a response from their staff. And I quote, "I consulted with the leadership team at the Dollywood Foundation and want to confirm that we were not aware of and did not give approval for the money spent by the Strong Reader Partnership."

"We did not know how much money they received from the state, when they received the funds, and how they were being spent." Furthermore, we received a letter from Miss Jackie Wong on 04/02/2026, just a few days ago, in which you stated, Miss Wong, "We are in receipt of your request for agreements with the Dollywood Foundation after August 2024."

"We do not have any agreements. It is our understanding that the California State Library administered grants with them directly." Furthermore, we have additional communication from the Dollywood Foundation on 11/13/2025 in which they stated, "We have contractual agreements with each of the local program partners and do not rely on SRP for those relationships. The Dollywood Foundation requested that SRP not engage with our local program partners without our involvement. We have documentation to this effect if that becomes necessary."

And, and to, and to speak to that and in agreement with that, we did not coordinate with local partners without Dolly Parton's involvement, the Imagination Library's involvement. We worked in lockstep with them, and I think that is reflected in the comments.

So how would you describe that you worked in lockstep with them and they are saying that they do not have any sort of consultation with you all in terms of how money is spent, how much money is received from the state, which contractors are used, that they're not familiar with any of the contractors, that they are asking you all to not engage with local program partners, that they handle and manage those relationships on their own?

I'm just, I'm struggling to understand what the agreement and the partnership is supposed to look like if you're working directly with them.

Well, Jackie, do you wanna take that one? And I'll?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, no.

There, that is a, a fair question. And the model itself is, as you know, Dolly Parton publishes their own books and manufacturers their own books, and they actually require that local match, which requires the local direct agreement with the Dollywood Foundation. That's how they do the one-for-one match.

So that is, that is true that they do have those relationships directly with the local partners in which our role is to actually help the locals understand the collaborative model. And so we affirm that to be true, from the Dollywood Foundation. We had regular meetings with them--I, we can go back to our records--often, and I do believe that they, you have documentation that actually provides the updates, of the regular updates of when and how we were engaging and talking with the Foundation.

Yeah, and I think to provide a little more detail, the grant as originally submitted sort of contemplated one structure, which then was conformed after sort of the shifts of funds to, directly to the Dollywood Foundation. Following that, as the Board Members mentioned, we did engage regularly with leadership of the Dollywood Foundation to really understand how the work could be complementary and additive. I think it was a priority of the Board as well as a directive of the Library to ensure that that close coordination was happening.

We did receive a request, to ensure that tight coordination.

There were communications that were drafted together, to make sure that the local program partners, as mentioned; typically, their relationship is governed by two different agreements. One is a memorandum of understanding between the Dollywood Foundation and then that local nonprofit. It sort of underscore data privacy related issues, how to use and not use the book order system, for example. That's kind of the underlying information technology system that Dolly Parton administers and and kind of one of their core roles.

So, negotiating the books, selecting the books, producing the books, sort of administrating the mailing list functionally.

So that's how they sort of house the, what I would consider a primary key performance indicator as you've indicated. You know, how many books are going where, to what counties, to what zip codes under what partners' construct. The second agreement that each of those local partners engage in is related to a licensing agreement. Obviously Imagination Library, with Dolly Parton, you know, is a very important brand to uphold, which we understood, you know, very clearly in our sort of onboarding sessions directly with the marketing team there.

And so I give you a little bit of that framework because, yes, sort of the legal related issues in relation to using the actual program or conforming it to the California, sort of, geography, that's certainly the case. I think where we were really enjoying close collaboration with the Dollywood Parton Foundation was really around our expertise in sort of that multilingual California approach.

And so in that instance, we were working with them to identify, you know, there were a handful of counties that they had actually submitted, where local entities needed a little extra capacity or, may want to be considered for additional funds, similar to the United Way example that you provided, to support sort of their overall work to distribute books to children.

So you used the term again agreements, but as I mentioned before, Miss Wong, you sent us a late letter stating that there are no agreements between you all and the Dollywood Foundation, but you just used that term agreement. So is there an existing agreement between the SRP nonprofit and the Dollywood Foundation? Do you have any sort of documents detailing the agreement that you just described?

No.

They were collaborative working agreements. So they were verbal. We have regular cadence of meetings. Happy to provide those. And when we're able to produce the minutes, we will, you will see the regular cadence of meetings and conversations we do have.

I have to be direct and we were actually examining with the board, agreements. And so, Laura, I don't know if you want to talk to that process, which we never were able to execute.

It was one of our challenges. I mean, throughout you, you can imagine that there were significant challenges outside forces that, that impeded our progress, frankly. And, and and that's difficult for us to say. But one of them was inking an agreement with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library was not done, and that was not because we did not want one.

I, I have trouble justifying that you all had an agreement when you have no documentation that there was one.

And when we have direct communication from the Dollywood Foundation saying that not only was there no agreement, but that they had no communication or coordination with you all in terms of these vendors being hired, in terms of working together with local program partners, how much money was being utilized or spent, how much money was being received from the state, that there seemed to be real separation between your operations and what the Dollywood Foundation was doing.

There are financial separation, and we are an independent nonprofit with very, with aligned goals. But when we say we worked collaboratively with them, the frequency of meetings and the amount of time that we spent in concert with them, we used their entire model and were committed to it. Our work was done through the lens of the Dolly Parton model that has been successful across multiple states. Our job was to ensure that it was translated to California's unique population.

And our, our, our goal, like, as I said in, in the opening, was audacious.

It is incredibly difficult to establish an institution--the groundwork and the infrastructure that needs to be laid--not just so that we can get books into the hands of kids now, but so that it's self sustaining. So that the local nonprofits are able to have the enrollment capacity and the fundraising capacity to ensure that we don't take the state's dollars and spend them on direct services with no ability to ensure that books will be able to be delivered in the future.

And I think in particular, we really focused on ensuring that we wanted to build an infrastructure that would, would find and target California's hardest to reach kids in the most underserved areas. So a lot of the work was done to be strategic and to have a planning process to ensure not just a year's worth of books, but an institution that would last for decades.

Miss Fink, you say that you all utilize the framework that the Dolly Parton Foundation had been using, that the Dolly Parton Imagination Library had been using. So how much of the State Taxpayer Dollars that you were allocated was actually directed towards providing books for children?

Well, our job was not to directly provide books for children. Our job was to ensure that we built an infrastructure that enabled that. So for example, we didn't purchase books. The Dolly Parton Imagination Library and I'll, I'll let my colleague speak to the the details there,

but our job was to ensure that the local nonprofits were able to boost their enrollment numbers, to expand into new counties, ensure that we had local partners that were available and able to be brought online because that, in, in the end, is how the books end up getting delivered.

And so I think the number that you're, I don't know that I'm gonna satisfy your question because the number that you're looking for is different than the way in which we operated in alignment with that Dolly Parton model.

So utilizing what you just said, that your goal was to create those partnerships in order to facilitate the process of providing books to children.

Certainly.

How many partnerships did you all successfully initiate in order to provide books to children?

Sonia or Jackie? Sonia, do you wanna talk about the specifics?

Sonia, you can talk about the the meetings you had, the, the community outreach in--I want to be quick.

I don't, and I don't, I don't wanna hear about the number of meetings. I want to hear about grant dollars provided. I wanna hear about what was executed on. Because as far as I can see here, there was no local partnerships that you all established in order to facilitate this program over a two-year period, and then you continued to bill this nonprofit after funding was supposed to be revoked. So it's, I'm trying to understand.

Explain to me the information that I'm missing here.

Yeah. I appreciate your question, Senator, of course. You know, with regard to sort of what I can speak to, you know, kind of in the first phase of the work that we were doing, you know, once the grant was received, you know, through sort of what I'll call just the second phase of the nonprofit itself, we were focused on establishing, you know, sort of Imagination Library of California, the statewide sort of presence.

We were focused on a variety of different regions, meeting with, you know, individuals that would be prospective partners in San Diego, for example, to sort of move beyond the zip codes, the limited zip codes that were there to expand to the entire county, meeting with different organizations in Fresno, very similarly, you know, how can we continue to bolster and expand the program, either to move partial counties to full counties or to bring online new counties.

You know, we had some conversations in Los Angeles with regard to sort of the service areas that are typical.

I had a chance to work on Census 2020 outreach and knowing sort of the geographic expanse, but also the demographics of Los Angeles required sort of maybe a different fit approach there. So in the first phase, we worked through sort of identifying where were some of those areas that we could proactively be going to, partners to be working with, etcetera. And then in the second phase, very similarly, the board asked for a very specific and targeted approach.

So there were a handful of areas that we focused on. Fresno, Sacramento, San Diego, I think were the four that we had active conversations with, you know, in looking at sort of expansion in San Joaquin County, for example, what sort of services might help them, you know, sort of move to their expansion in that particular instance.

One of the oldest local program partners had a smaller ZIP code geography that they were expanding to the whole county. And so they were in need of specifically some data management personnel support, as just an example.

The statistics that are actually outlined, in the agenda, so I appreciate it. And over the course of the time, over 3,000,000, close to 3,000,000 books have been delivered. And again, it's not solely, I want to be clear that it's actually not solely one organization. It requires the commitment from the locals to do that, and these what, what, Ms. Harris just outlined is that work, right, that commitment, that long term commitment.

We also are not in competition with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library--we're in alignment with them. And so their success and our success are dovetailed. Every time Sonia takes a meeting in the counties that we're looking to build outreach to and, and, and in those meetings with the nonprofits as the best practices are shared, additional books go out to kids.

And so while we were in the foundation laying stage throughout the time that we were, that we had funds, that work is reflected in the increase in numbers as well.

I, I appreciate what you all are saying, but it's, it's very challenging when I have communication here from 11/13/2025 from the Dollywood Foundation stating very clearly that they have contractual agreements with their local program partners and that they do not rely on SRP for those relationships, and that the Dollywood Foundation specifically requested that SRP not engage with their local program partners without their involvement. That doesn't seem like they're relying on you in order to build relationships.

It actually seems like they're specifically requesting that you all not be involved in the work that they're engaging in. Now I'm going to continue on here because they have more questions related to invoicing and some of the contracts. SB 105 was in print on 09/08/2025, and then it was enacted on 09/17/2025, and that stipulated that all remaining funds, including ones held by the nonprofit, be returned to the state for allocation by DGS.

Sage Strategies billed 205.5 hours between September 26 and October 31, 2025. So that's about a month, a little over a month period, and invoiced the nonprofit for a total of $40,000 and seven, forty, $40,775.

In comparison, Sage Strategies billed a 166.75 hours for $39,000 for work between June 1 to June 30, 158 hours for $36,400 for work between June 1 to July 31, and billed 114 hours for $21,000 for work between August 1 to August 31. So, as I mentioned, this was after this period when this funding was supposed to be returned to the state.

So did this invoice further implement the statewide Imagination Library to deliver books to children?

What was this invoice during this time period for?

Senator, I'm sorry. Could you repeat the time period to which you were referring?

So the time period that I'm referring to is billing from September 26 to October 31. And this was after, SB 105, the budget bill was enacted, which was on September 17.

Of last year?

Of last year.

Well, that was the closeout period. So when we, we, we take our relationship and our oversight of taxpayer dollars seriously, as well, and when we received notice that there was a rescission of funds, we worked within the parameters of our grant agreement which requires a 45-day period in which the money is returned and grant reporting requirements are met. And we were able to submit that on time, answering every question and submitting every document that was requested at that time.

And as you will note, every dollar that we, was in our possession was returned to the state.

In furtherance of that, we asked, the State Library for clarification because we were a little bit surprised, of the notice, but understand that, as stewards of the state budget and taxpayer dollars, that was the request. And so, if we could continue to, to bill the grant, and they confirmed that we could as we closed out, canceled contracts, potential agreements with locals, etcetera.

So we did seek clarification of whether or not we were allowed to continue to use the grant for closed out activities, and that was confirmed.

This was also during the time period when our staff began requesting some of this financial reporting, right. And as I stated before, you all were not producing the quarterly financial reporting that you all were supposed to be producing.

In order to produce that, we would need a structure and a grant reporting requirements and deliverables. And, and we do not we did not receive those. We requested them. We did not receive them. But we agree that would have been helpful.

And so this, the totality of this work during this period was so that you could produce and close out the nonprofit and and end some of these contracts and move some of these funds. Is that correct?

That's correct.

And all of the quarterly financial reporting that was supposed to be done on a regular three month basis was basically done during this time period, during the last few months because none of it was done previously?

We received our initial--I can't remember the date that we received the final closeout grant reporting requirements--but we received them from the State Library during that time period after the rescission, and we completed them within our contractually required window. Within that 45 days.

It's, I find it a little bit strange that you have four folks, four different vendors, rather, that are supposed to be managing your finances. You also have Miss Harris who is utilizing Sage Strategies as well as your team and your staff to support the closeout, that this is being done in such a last minute manner. And, in addition to that, that there seems to be so many errors. We have bank statements that show checks bouncing.

There was also errors in the financial reports that you all provided that were inaccurate.

I think at one point there was like a $110,000 in terms of, that was misreported. I mean, all of these things are, are really concerning. Do you agree?

Those are, those are fair questions and observations. We were rapidly trying to, remit the, the, all the tax dollars that were left back to the State of California, and they were, they were in some cases rushed, as you saw, in your staff report that outlined some errors or over reporting and under billing.

Miss Wong, would you agree that when it comes to the handling of these finances, the details around these invoices, that they were not handled responsibly?

I would disagree because we approve these invoices.

So when you have checks bouncing, when financial reports are not being provided in a timely manner, when you have misreporting on documents that you're providing to Senate Committee Staff, those things are not troubling to you?

We were pleased to have the opportunity after collecting the documents, reporting within that 45-day window, which, which is for multiple years of accounting work, is a short time period. We definitely regret that there were, reconciliation errors, and we have resolved them. We're grateful to the committee and to the State Library for helping us do so, and we're also pleased to see that in fact it was, the discrepancies were resolved in the State's favor.

I have real concerns with how your finances were managed and the fact that you did approve some of these invoices, the fact that you had four different vendors that were managing your finances, and yet there seemed to be a number of errors even in the very, very delayed time period that the committee decided to accept these documents from you all. The next few questions that I have are related to the contract that you all executed with Shipyard, which is a full service advertising agency.

How was Shipyard selected to provide marketing services for the Strong Reader Partnership? What was the process used to select them?

I think we referred to our, we approached Shipyard as we approached other vendors previously, and the goal in hiring them was to ensure that we boosted our enrollment numbers, which I'm hearing is a concern, was a concern of ours as well. And in order to do that, we needed to have professional help in terms of targeting an outreach, something that, the local nonprofits and the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, also was work that was not being performed.

And so we were really working on a long term investment and strategy to create institutional knowledge and understanding and resources so that they could be used not just in one county by one nonprofit, but we really wanted to provide strategic and effective support to ensure that we worked to enroll kids, and you see the beginning of that work happened. And actually, we had an entire campaign prepared.

In addition, we have multiple assets and hearing earlier in the hearing, we, there are many, many assets that were just on the precipice of being deployed when the rescission came came in.

And so we're, we're deeply disappointed that all of that work and investment was abandoned, but we do have those assets and we hope that the Imagination Library and whoever is continuing with this program will leverage that research and all of those graphic assets and strategy.

So I have four invoices here for a web digital landing page. There's one for $18,000, another for $50,000, another one for $25,000, and another one for $32,000, totaling $125,000. And I also have an image of the website that was taken when it was live and still up. It's actually less than a page. It has two buttons, one to sign up for free books and the other to contact.

Do you think that it's reasonable for a website to cost a $125,000, especially one that is incredibly simple in its design?

Thank you, Senator. I'm happy to answer that question. Appreciate the reference that you provided. I'm not necessarily familiar with that, but I can speak to the work that Shipyard was doing at the time. The plan, as mentioned earlier, was to deploy a multilingual outreach and education campaign that would meet the needs of many families throughout the State of California.

They did build sort of the back end of the website. As you referenced, we did have a phased approach that intended to build with the program over time. This did include both English and Spanish, sort of website architecture. In addition, there's typically a advanced work that must be completed in order to develop and deploy the website, both in the wireframe and the user experience to make sure that we're driving, you know, whomever is visiting the site to core places as quickly as possible.

So when you knew that money was going to be revoked from SRP, why would, if those services weren't delivered upon, if this website is then taken down, why why would you pay a $125,000 for services that you've not received? And as far as I can see, there was no translations posted on this website. It's in English.

We're happy to ensure that the committee has the aggregation of assets. I also, I, I'm, I'm not fully understanding the $125,000 connection to simply the website. There was an overarching body of work that Shipyard performed that would institute the statewide multilingual campaign and it involved. It's a persuasion effort. And so research has to be done in order to, engage in that persuasion effort so that we ensure that it's as, it's as effective as possible.

And then the individual assets need to be developed and where we stopped-- and that was all done over months through engagement with the board and with Sonia's team--and where we stopped was deploying those assets, was the going live, which is why you you see that the social media does not have followers because we were arrested, in, and we were unable to launch.

Right? And our timeline, it almost coincided exactly with when we were planning to launch.

So I'm referencing the $125,000 for a website because that's what it appears it's for. On the invoices that you've provided, and again, there's only so much detail that I have here to refer to, it states that these were all for Web Digital Landing Page Fee. That's what these four invoices are for. So if it's not a $125,000 for this single page website, then what is Web Digital Landing Page Fee beyond the website page?

We can go back and look at that particular line item and provide you with additional documentation and understanding. I don't have those resources in front of me at this time.

So there are additional documents that you all have that you've not provided to the committee?

That, that was not my, that, that was not the reference that I was making. Forgive my misspeaking. We can get back to you on that line item after we have reviewed it, and we can talk about all of the allocations of, of dollars in a more specific detail.

And as Miss Fink outlined is that we actually do have the assets that were not requested, but happy to produce those assets, and what that looked like, the full web design, the multilingual pages, etcetera, the research that may be helpful to better getting a more complete understanding of what that work looked like. So that is, that is not included in your documentation.

Go ahead.

Wait.

I would also say we would love to present the work because the work is substantial. I think it's valuable, and I think it has, we would love to see it utilized.

Well, if there are more details and more information that you have about the work that you all had been producing over the two year time period that you had received funding, the time to provide that documentation was when it was requested of you. I mean, that is what the committee is trying to understand. And so you've provided these invoices and these bank statements, and they lack detail. They lack substance.

And so when my staff and I are trying to make sense of how public taxpayer dollars were utilized in order to accomplish the goal, and the stated goal is to provide books to children, I'm not seeing that reflected here.

And what you're expressing is that there's more documentations, there's there's other pieces of this that, that will further justify that you were meeting that goal. And, you know, the reason why I ask questions about, first of all, that being a very high price tag for a website, $125,000, very, very costly. There was also $581,000 in total that was expended to Shipyard, which is a very large sum of money.

And, you know, this was supposed to be for them to assist with the Strong Reader Partnership's brand, develop all owned properties, such as the website, social media channels, create marketing outreach and social media content in multiple languages, etcetera. But we don't actually see the product of that work.

And so you expended that money without receiving the product. So I'm, I'm just, I'm trying to better understand here how these dollars were used. That's half a million dollars that you paid to an advertising agency, and I don't see the results of that.

We acknowledge that the assets are not included in your documentation. We're responding to specific requests about receipts and invoices and financial information. So we acknowledge that the deliverables and the product is not, are not included. We understand that it would have been good to have, but yet not requested of us from the State Library at that in when we were closing out.

And, and we will gladly provide the assets. We'll gladly provide the assets.

And, and we will confirm that we had shared the assets with the State Library, and they were aware of this work product.

So you shared details related to the website. You shared details related to this advertising plan for SRP with the State Library. So that's documentation that you've given them and that apparently this committee hasn't received.

Well, there are, there are assets too. Like, these are all, there's photographic assets. There's advertising assets. There's a significant portfolio of assets.

I, I wanna note as well, and this is separate and it's small in comparison to all these big pieces, but there was also an invoice for a photographer that you all apparently hired, but the only photos that we see posted on social media are stock photos. And so I'm not quite sure, like, what kind of photography services hap, happened, and where those photos are and where they exist.

Sonia, can you speak to the $500?

Yeah. The photos were taken in conjunction with preparing for our public launch of the first campaign and sort of phase two or, with, sort of with a specific reference to the narrative that we submitted.

In addition to that, that was, we should add, is that the Dolly Parton Imagination Library wanted to announce, Miss Harris as the Executive Director of California, and these assets were part of that.

I, I have, I have a number of questions about the contractors, and it. I, I want to make clear, you knew that you were coming to this committee hearing today. You've seen the questions. We had brought Mr. Lucas in to our last budget subcommittee on March 12 so that we could discuss some of these items. At what point did you think that it would be a good idea to provide us with documents showing us the work that was produced using state taxpayer dollars?

You mean proactively to provide you with documentation? Which specific documentation? We did submit our final report to the Library. The final report and the narrative, were both submitted. But our, I'm, I'm just not understanding the question of what we were, what you're asking us about.

Website, photos, any sort of justification showing that you all were delivering on the state's intended purpose of this program. That is what appears to be missing here. And you all are saying that you have more of those documents, and these are the very things that I'm asking you for. Right? There are a number of contracts, hundreds of thousands of dollars of state funds that were spent, and I don't have evidence of that work.

And you all have provided invoices that lack detail, that lack specifics, and so we are not able to understand what you all were doing with these dollars.

That is the whole purpose of this hearing.

Yeah. We appreciate that, and we appreciate the subcommittee's due diligence in making sure that the, the monies was, were expended within the guard rails of the legislation. If I'm being direct, it didn't occur to me until right now that we should turn over those assets because the questions that were being asked of us were financial and invoices. And so we didn't it, just it didn't occur to us until right now to actually offer up the assets: the website and the bilingual.

And we understand now that's what is missing.

And we take responsibility for not being more proactive in producing those assets for the subcommittee without the the direct question. So we will take responsibility for that.

And I appreciate you all getting those documents to us as soon as possible. The reason why I asked so many of these questions, and I wanna revisit something that I brought up while mister Lucas was up here, is, you know, when I look deeper into some of these invoices when I have the ability to do so, that I'm, I'm not seeing the work actually reflected in dollars being utilized the way that it's stated in these invoices.

You know, as was mentioned earlier, you know, United Way of the California Capital Region. You know, at first, I thought it was a grant when I was first looking at your documentation paperwork, and then I realized that it was an invoice. It was an invoice for 07/15/2025, and the invoice was for marketing.

When staff asked you to provide more details in terms of how this grant was utilized and how United Way of the California Capital Region was selected, you provided a PowerPoint presentation as did United Way.

And in that PowerPoint presentation, it talks about creating a online strategy to target parents and caregivers with children under five and what that targeting would look like through social media, particularly utilizing Meta ad placements, and using SRP logo for co-branding assets. But as I mentioned before, when you create a Meta ad or a Facebook ad, it continues to live online. You can see the details of it. I went onto the California Capital Region's back end in the ad library, and there was no advertisement.

They didn't do any ads for the year of 2025.

They have done only three ads in their existence as a Facebook platform. Two of those ads were from 2019. One was from 2024. So how did this, these dollars get utilized, and how did you work with United Way in order to make sure that this program was going live? Do you even know if it went live?

Sonia, can you speak to the $5,000 grant?

Yeah. I can talk about the work we did prior to the dissolution of our contract. We did engage directly with United Way and Shipyard, and we saw this as an opportunity to pilot and sort of a partnership with a local entity. In sort of the complete plan, it was contemplated that we would offer marketing support for, you know, specific organizations.

And the formative research that we conducted directly with local program partners, it had been sort of indicated that there were specific capacity gaps. So, you know, perhaps a nonprofit, you know, maybe didn't have a full time, you know, marketing team. Maybe, you know, they didn't have a bilingual Spanish proficiency example, and such. And so, you know, the goal was really to take a step back and make sure that we were working with a local partner.

You know, our goal was never to come in and, sort of wish something specific on them, but really do this in collaboration with them.

What do you really need? So in this instance, we did work directly with United Way. I believe at the time they had a specific, sort of campaign that they were doing to enroll children into the Dolly Parton Imagination Library program. And so this was intended to sort of do direct outreach to a specific population to drive enrollment.

That's fantastic. That advertising never went live. Do you know if that advertising went live?

I can't speak to that, Senator.

Did you follow up with United Way given that they invoiced you all as a vendor for services to see when that program would be going live and when that advertising would be going live?

In the initial conversation, we did have discussions about the time period. I'd have to go back to get you that specific information. But after our contract was dissolved, I can't speak to what happened after that.

It's, it's not there. I mean, I can tell you I looked myself. So I don't, I'm, I'm troubled by the fact that the State Library is supposed to be providing oversight and accountability for you all. And then you all are then subcontracting with other vendors and not providing any oversight to see if they're actually delivering on the services that they've committed to you all. And there's a number of other services that you all were billed for, and we don't have any evidence of that work either.

Do you see my concern with this trend that I'm seeing here with these invoices?

I appreciate your point of view, Senator.

Do you know of any money that was actually utilized to assist with covering the cost of books for delivery to children or any money that was actually applied towards getting books in the hands of children?

I'm sorry. Could you, could you clarify what you, what you mean by that?

How were the dollars that you all were provided utilized to get books into the hands of children?

I would, I would say that during the term of our agreement, our job was to build an institution and infrastructure so to deliver those books to kids. So our job was on the back end, was to create local partnerships, to expand into additional counties, to find local partners and ensure that they had the capacity to do the fundraising that was required of them and also to do outreach to ensure that we enrolled specifically the hardest to reach kids, and in a multilingual fashion.

And that was our work. That was the work of Sonya as our executive director. That was the work that we invested in specific to shipyard with targeted enrollment so that statewide resources would be available for all of these smaller institutions to be used over time and for us to be able to build that infrastructure to be to make sure that it was impactful.

You've mentioned building the infrastructure, building the foundation in order to run this program, but I don't see that actually being executed on. There's lots of billing here and, you know, contracts that were executed, you know, with a number of vendors who were paid for work that we still don't see.

I think the United Way example, a very small example, is a good example of money that was utilized and you all have no idea whether or not that was actually implemented and used for a marketing campaign. But I can tell you very easily, and any of you could go online right now to look, that it was not. It would have taken you, what, 15 seconds to look that up?

You all have a responsibility as well. Right? You all are overseeing public funds as a nonprofit, state taxpayer dollars, and making sure that it's actually being applied and utilized as it's stated. You all are hiring these vendors. You all are supposed to be holding them accountable. And what I see here is that you did not do so, and that makes me incredibly troubled and concerned.

And the fact that you're telling me that you still have additional documentation that you haven't provided to the committee that we have yet a chance to review is also concerning as well. Now, I want to go ahead and take a pause now and turn it over to Senator Grove to see if Senator Grove has further questions or comments.

Thank you all for being here to help us understand what you've been doing with the taxpayer dollars that were provided to you. Several times you reiterated almost the same thing. That you're responsible for setting up a statewide program that to reach to help communities and counties with fundraisers.

To enroll individuals and nonprofits into the program to establish books for California's most vulnerable, for hard to reach individuals, the hardest the hardest to reach kids. How many of those kids did you actually enroll?

Thank you for the question, Senator Grove. We you could if you look at the numbers, the overall enrollment numbers, those numbers were impacted by the work that we are describing today. There was no tracking system in place for us to simply disaggregate our work from the work of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. And as I mentioned, we worked...

Stop you right there because we're on a time stream. We're on... You know, we I have probably about 15 minutes left. I'm asking you a question. The Dolly Parton Imagination Library, based on the information that the Madam, that Madam Chair provided, they didn't want to engage in with their local partners.

I definitely can see why, based on the email that they provided. So I my question to you is is that I have the numbers in front of me that the Dolly Parton Imagination Library enrolled in each county, helped fundraise in each county, the students that participated in each of the 58 counties, and what they did. I'm asking you what your numbers did.

And based on the information that you provided the committee, you issued one $5,000 grant out of $1.1 million. Out of that $5,000 grant, how many children were enrolled in that process or books were delivered for that $5,000 that you actually did give and used taxpayer dollars according with the billing which wanted you to do? I just want the numbers. How many kids are enrolled based on what you did at the reader program?

I appreciate the question, and I would say that based on the frequency of contact, the...

I'm not asking you that. I'm asking you what you did. They say that you haven't participated with them. They didn't want you to participate. Who did you, who in what county, just give me Sacramento County. Who did you engage with in Sacramento County of with...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Who did you engage with other than the United Way or what individual did you engage with and how many books were distributed based on that $5,000 grant? That's all I'm asking you. How many books?

Well, we, I just want to make clear that we worked in partnership and had many, many meetings with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library and that letter I don't believe is reflective of the entirety of that relationship. And I we did not disaggregate our numbers from there. But I will let Sonya speak to that specific one $5,000 grant. And I appreciate your question.

Thank you. Ms. Harris.

Can I just... I apologize. Thank you, Senator Grove. I did not mean to interrupt. I just wanted to make sure that from the beginning we did not want to work separately from the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, and we were absolutely instructed not to do that because of the brand recognition and the fidelity of their model on our...

Then why, why did you think it was okay to set up a different program? Why not just use the Dolly Parton Imagination Library like the other states that have been successful from doing since 1995? But you chose to set up your own nonprofit.

We did not set ourselves up. We did not set ourselves up.

Okay. But the State Librarian allowed you to participate as a nonprofit instead of just using the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. And just frankly, you guys failed. You took the same amount of money, the $1.1 million that Dolly Parton got $1.5 million in the same time frame, and where they have proven track records of working across the state in 58 counties.

Raising money for the dollar to dollar match and then also providing 65,000 books on the ground and enrolling 85,000, excuse me. 1.5 million books on... Excuse me, 1 million books on the ground and 65,000 new students enrolled. You can't tell me what students you've enrolled.

Now you're piggybacking and saying that you get credit for what Dolly Parton Imagination Library did, but I'm asking you what the, what the Smart Reader Program, what did you do? How many students did you enroll? Are you the executive director?

Formerly, Senator.

Formerly. As executive director, would it be your responsibility to track that?

We were working with Dolly Parton Imagination Library...

As the executive director of the Smart Reader Program, was it one of your job duties to track how many students for measurable goals that you would enroll in the program?

We did work closely with them to identify areas of enrollment.

You can't spend the same amount of money they did and piggyback on their success. I'm asking you what you spent the $1 million in taxpayer dollars for. A lot of it was to different consultants for financial firms that can't provide us information other than, you know, initial and a first name or a name and a $43,000 bill.

I mean, there's no data on those invoices, and you paid people to provide that to us. So I'm just trying to figure out what you did with your $1.1 million and how many of those dollars reached actual kids on the ground.

Yeah. Thank you, Senator. I think as Board Member Fink tried to outline, you know, really our understanding of the Dolly Parton Imagination Program, Imagination Library Program, was to conform, you know, and as you mentioned, really help inspire the love of reading.

I think this is one of the things that I appreciated most about the program and sort of my history with books with my grandma. She sent, she got books sent directly to our home and, you know, it was a means that I could read with my mother, especially while my father, you know, was on deployment in the Air Force.

I think that really called to me as a mother of two children as well. So I just want to express, I think, the deep appreciation that I have had personally, but I think the board, you know, for the incredible program that the Dolly Parton Imagination Library team continues to expand, you know, incredibly internationally.

You know, as it relates to I think your specific question about book enrollment, I think what becomes nuanced is really who is responsible for that insofar as the local program partner. One of the things I also really appreciated having done statewide work across California in a variety of different sort of manners is they really, really honor I think the relationship with the local nonprofit.

But I'm asking you how many local nonprofits did you, the Smart Reader Program, participate with that you enrolled, that you met with and you have agreement that you're going to provide services to that nonprofit. How many of those do you have? You. Not Dolly Parton. You.

I think this is where the real...

Give me a number. I'm just, I'm looking for a number. Give me a number.

Just to speak to the premise of the question first, which is that, as outlined earlier, that we worked through the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. So when a nonprofit...

They didn't want to work with you.

Well, they did work with us.

I know, but I'm just saying that they told you please don't go, don't go to local...

Right. That is correct. And we and we honored that request. We honored that request and we engaged in parallel to them. So when you see new counties sign up...

When they asked you not to do that, who did you go recruit to develop and get this...

To your, to your point, exactly. We did not go and recruit independently. Our job was to work alongside them and in parallel to and respectful of their guidelines and rules. They're an established, successful nonprofit and we honored that throughout our relationship. We were an entrepreneurial nonprofit with a different charge.

Why was the need to set up another nonprofit to compete with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library?

I was, we didn't see ourselves in competition. We saw ourselves in collaboration and we worked in partnership together. I was appointed to the board by former Senate Pro Tem Toni Atkins in a volunteer capacity. Jackie Wong is also here. And we were tremendously excited several years ago and obviously so much has gone on in between, but we were really moved to ensure that we built a long lasting California solution. We in fact, we believed that...

I wanna ask you that question. You just said it. You said it several times. You wanted to ensure that you built a long lasting California solution. Dolly Parton Imagination Library through several states has been in existence since 1995. Do you consider that a long lasting solution?

I support the work of Dolly Parton Imagination Library.

Why wouldn't we just adopt every other program that they have and let the people that know how to do it best, the Imagination Library, why did we have to interfere and create our own California nonprofit, and to make this happen, spend $1.1 million and not deliver one book?

That's what I think happened. I don't think you delivered. I think there was not one book, not one enrollment, not one county participation where you've partnership, you've said, with creating a dollar to dollar for match. How much money did you help counties raise as the executive director?

We had ongoing conversations, and as I mentioned earlier...

Lots of conversations. How much money did you raise?

In five particular counties, we were in San Diego, we were working with a variety of partners there.

And how much money did you help them raise?

I can't speak to where that partnership is today.

How much money when you were the executive director did you help them raise for the dollar to dollar match?

We didn't engage in the direct sort of ask. I think the relationship that we were trying to build with the local partners was to bring together folks that we understood had resources.

You said that you, you said, you all three said in your testimony at one time and the other that one of your jobs was to make sure that you let local partners do the dollar to dollar match, which was part of the contract in the agreement. How much money did you help raise for that dollar to dollar match and participate?

I can speak to that, but I think we need the broader context.

I'm asking for a dollar.

I appreciate that you are, and I don't have that number for you.

I didn't think so. So I'll go into the question that you won't have an answer for. As the executive director, you render a contract. Right? Would you, would, were you included in the contract with the State Librarian that you couldn't lobby? Is that part of your, are you included in that group of people that could not lobby because you were an executive director of the Smart Reader Program. Correct?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. So working for the Smart Reader Program, which is a nonprofit that the State Librarian set up, were you under that same contract or part of that same contract that you were not allowed to lobby?

The terms of the agreement did prohibit lobbying.

But for you or just the board?

I understand the grant itself.

The grant itself, which you were a part of, does it prohibit you from lobbying? Yes or no? As the executive director, does it prohibit you?

The grant outlines, yeah, prohibitions.

Is it your understanding that under the grant that you are prohibited from lobbying as the executive director?

Yes.

Thank you. In August of 2024, did you participate in a hearing? And did you make an appearance in a hearing?

I did offer public testimony in a hearing at the direction of the board.

For SB or AB 157, when you, when you offered public testimony?

We understood that the funds would be leaving California, and so we voiced concern with that particular issue.

Well, that's not exactly true. The funds were not leaving California. The funds were to support California, but they were gonna be managed by the Dolly Pardon Imagination Library and not just this situation that we have here where there's no accountability, no invoices, no end results, no goals measured.

The funds leaving California was not true. They were available. Maybe the Dolly Parton Imagination Library directed those funds in California and was successful at it, but they didn't leave. So when you gave your testimony, did you support or oppose AB 157?

In the testimony, I opposed it.

You opposed it. Did you meet with any other legislators or talk to anybody in the committee regarding your opposition?

Thank you, Senator. I would need to go back to check, but I believe I, we did drop off documentation in a couple offices.

Okay. And you are classifying that not as lobbying against a bill as the executive director? You are classifying that as outreach to us?

I can just speak to dropping off the letters, Senator.

And what do you consider that in your own mind as an executive director? Obviously, highly educated. What does that mean to you? If you drop off a letter to me to as a legislator and you want me to oppose a bill and you bring it to me, are you lobbying me? What are you doing? What in your mind are you doing?

Thank you, Senator, for that. I think I can speak to dropping off the letters and, you know, in the course of the work that I do, you know, kind of again, ensuring that the board's communication is facilitated in the day to day administration of the nonprofit.

Okay. Is administering the day to day operations of the nonprofit, are you required or do you have someone that takes minutes at board's meetings? You've all testified that you've extensive lengthy board meetings. Where are the minutes for those meetings that are required by law in the state of California for nonprofits to keep? Do you have those?