Sacramento State releases mostly unredacted CapRadio financial report demanded by Bee

The public sought answers after an audit probing Capital Public Radio in September 2023 found widespread financial mismanagement at the station, an auxiliary of Sacramento State.

But when the forensic examination promised by university President Luke Wood arrived months late last August, it redacted the names of all relevant employees, including former board members alleged to have conflicts of interest — and the publicly released version excluded attached documents that detailed how exactly funds were allegedly spent by the station’s former general manager Jun Reina.

Weeks after The Sacramento Bee’s attorneys demanded the complete unredacted audit, the university has released to the newspaper a version of the report with minimal redactions.

The unredacted version of the report, prepared by local accounting firm CliftonLarsonAllen, contains 130 pages of documents not included in the initial release across 19 exhibits and seven attachments. These included email exchanges, invoices and American Express transactions totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, roughly $450,000 of which did not have supporting documentation including more than $250,000 for which auditors said they could find no business-related purpose.

Among the other newly revealed findings:

▪ An itemized list of transactions for the American Express card controlled by Reina. The Bee’s review of the spending found that the card was used for more than $145,000 in travel, lodging and vehicle rental costs that auditors said did not appear to be related to CapRadio business. It was also used for some $27,000 at restaurants and for roughly $17,000 in golf club membership dues.

▪ Auditors in the August version of the audit said CapRadio awarded a furniture contract to Western Contract with no evidence of a competitive bid process, though other companies had contacted the station with interest to supply materials. Bill Yee, who is Western Contract’s president and CEO, was on the CapRadio board at the time. Reina in an email to CapRadio’s architecture firm described Yee as “panicking” because he heard the station was “shopping out our FFE (furniture, fixtures, and equipment) to multiple vendors.” Reina further wrote of Yee: “I assured him he was our guy.”

▪ Frank Maranzino, current general manager and interim president, wrote in an email to Sac State audit manager Mashariki Lawson-Cook last June that he along with Sacramento State’s then-chief financial officer Jonathan Bowman held a meeting with Yee during which Maranzino and Bowman informed him that Reina had taken out loans for office furniture. “Bill said he was surprised to hear that and that we thought there was a Capital Campaign that paid for the furniture,” Maranzino wrote. “The meeting ended with (Sacramento State) and CPR asking ‘what could possibly be done.’”

Reina, who resigned from CapRadio in 2023, did not respond to requests for comment. Attempts to reach his attorneys were unsuccessful. Stockton-based attorneys Mary Ann Bird and David Van Dyke, who represented Reina in August, did not respond to requests for comment.

The August report followed a separate audit released by the California State University system in September 2023 that found widespread financial mismanagement at the station. Turmoil had plagued the news station in 2023, leading to programming cuts and layoffs.

In the more recent examination, Roseville-based accounting firm CliftonLarsonAllen said a person identified only as “Subject #1” was linked to more than $450,000 in expenditures “without corresponding evidence of expense reports and/or receipts.” Subject #1 is Jun Reina, the station’s former general manager, as reported separately by CapRadio and Sacramento Bee journalists in the days following the report’s initial release.

The unredacted version of the report sent to The Bee further confirms Subject #1 as Reina, as well as the former board members described by CliftonLarsonAllen as having potential conflicts of interest. The Bee first reported those board members’ identities in August.

Reina retained legal counsel and was scheduled to speak with accountants to offer an explanation of the expenses while providing receipts. He ultimately pulled out of that interview, according to CliftonLarsonAllen’s report.

Sacramento State on Dec. 23 provided The Bee with a version of the audit report that contained most of the names of former employees and businesses with which CapRadio transacted or corresponded, but maintained the redactions of all attached exhibits, as well as the names of four people described as “witnesses.” That version also replaced the one available for public viewing on the university’s website, which was again updated Wednesday to include the 130 pages of attachments.

The identities of the four witnesses remained redacted from the documents sent to The Bee this month. But the attachments include an email sent by one of them, “Witness #2,” to Reina and other CapRadio officials pertaining to a Lake Tahoe-area timeshare property.

Sacramento State initially redacted the audit based on a request from law enforcement investigating financial improprieties at the station, said Lanaya Lewis, a university spokesperson. Wood, the university president, first revealed in a letter to students in August that the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office was investigating the financial improprieties. Sheriff’s officials said last week that the investigation remains ongoing.

Report’s release followed records requests, letter from Bee

Attorneys for The Bee, in a letter sent to Sacramento State on Dec. 12, demanded that the university release an unredacted version of the report, after the newspaper filed California Public Records Act requests to both the university and CapRadio seeking the document.

CapRadio responded to a separate request seeking board meeting minutes, which were used to confirm the identity of Reina and several other key figures mentioned in the document. But the university denied the request for the unredacted report, citing a right to privacy for those involved as well as the existence of an ongoing law enforcement investigation into CapRadio’s finances.

The Bee in its letter last month, however, argued that these considerations were insufficient to outweigh the public’s right to know information involving a public entity and how its taxpayer dollars are spent.

“We can’t let Sac State and CapRadio conceal the details of a scandal that has cost the public a great deal of money and certainly undermined faith in CapRadio and Sac State,” The Bee’s attorney Karl Olson said at the time.

This story was originally published January 9, 2025 at 5:00 AM.