Tim Walz watched fraudsters steal $350 million from programs meant to feed Minnesota children – and did nothing.
California just ran the same play.
But this time they stole it from Dolly Parton.
California State Library Built an Unauthorized Nonprofit and Paid Its Own Consulting Firm
Country music legend Dolly Parton created the Imagination Library in 1995 because she loves children and books. It's simple, it works, and it has delivered free books to millions of kids across five countries for three decades.
In 2022, California lawmakers approved $68 million to bring the program statewide – a rare bipartisan win, co-authored by Republican Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield.
What happened next is a masterclass in California government corruption.
Instead of sending the money directly to Dolly Parton's already-functioning nonprofit, State Librarian Greg Lucas – a political appointee of former Democrat Governor Jerry Brown with no library background who covered Sacramento politics for the San Francisco Chronicle – created his own unauthorized nonprofit called the Strong Reader Partnership.
The state gave that nonprofit $4.8 million.
The nonprofit's executive director also ran a Sacramento consulting firm. That firm received at least $208,652 in payments from the very nonprofit he directed.
Of that $4.8 million, $4 million was parked in a money market account generating $132,000 in interest while California kids weren't getting books.
The nonprofit eventually reported $1.2 million in total spending. Bank statements only documented $555,871 in actual expenses. That leaves $649,000 that no one can account for – including the people who took it.
Greg Lucas Has Been Asked for Receipts Six Times and Produced Nothing
Senate Budget Committee staff requested documentation six times between November 2025 and February 2026.
Six times. Nothing came back.
Then Lucas sat in front of Sen. Grove and delivered an answer so garbled it became a summary of everything wrong with Sacramento.
"The State Library followed… The state library followed to the best of our understanding, provided both, p-provided primarily by the Senate on implementing this program."
Word salad. From the man who controls your money.
Grove didn't flinch. "You don't have receipts requested six times. You don't have bank statements requested six times from this committee. You don't have documents to show where that money was spent. Where's the money?"
Lucas promised answers within a week and said he didn't realize creating a separate nonprofit was prohibited by the law he was hired to implement – the law that specifically told him to coordinate with an existing qualified nonprofit. Dolly Parton's nonprofit. The one already working in 58 California counties.
Grove pointed this out directly: "It's called The Dolly Parton Imagination Library. You didn't think their nonprofit was sufficient to work with?"
She then asked whether the State Library itself was a state entity. Lucas confirmed it was. So the state librarian used state resources to build an unauthorized nonprofit to replace a functioning national nonprofit, paid a consulting firm out of that nonprofit's funds, can't account for $650,000, and his defense is that he didn't understand the law.
Meanwhile, exactly one grant was delivered to actual children. A $5,000 grant to a single Sacramento-area partner serving Yolo County.
That's what California bought with $4.8 million.
This Is What Gavin Newsom's California Looks Like
This isn't an isolated blunder. It's a pattern with its own fingerprint.
The state's own auditor confirmed that under Gavin Newsom's administration, California lost $88 billion to waste, mismanagement, and outright theft – including tens of billions in homelessness funding with no accounting and massive COVID-era fraud that state agencies refused to stop after red flags were raised.
The DOJ under Pam Bondi dispatched a team of prosecutors to Minnesota after the Feeding Our Future scandal – a $250 million child nutrition fraud that ran the same playbook: create a nonprofit, route government money through it, and move faster than oversight can follow. Bondi is now turning that same scrutiny on California.
Newsom's own former chief of staff was indicted in November 2025 on 23 counts of bank and wire fraud. The scheme involved funneling money through business entities and disguising it as pay for a no-show job. The FBI's Sacramento Special Agent in Charge called it exactly what it was.
Now his appointed state librarian is sitting before the Legislature unable to explain $650,000 that was supposed to buy books for kindergartners. Newsom's office declined to comment and referred reporters to the State Library – the one that took the money.
Shannon Grove gave Lucas one week. Dolly Parton built a program that works in five countries and all 50 states. California built a nonprofit that stole from it.
Sources:
- Josh Koehn, "California's top librarian grilled over missing $650k from Dolly Parton's literacy program," New York Post, March 13, 2026.
- Katy Grimes, "More CA Fraud? State Librarian Cannot Account for $650,000 Intended for Dolly Parton's Children's Literacy Program," California Globe, March 12, 2026.
- "Lawmakers question California State Library over missing funds tied to children's literacy program," ABC10, March 13, 2026.
- "Grove presses for answers on $650k missing from state reading program," Bakersfield Californian, March 13, 2026.
- "Nonprofit revenue totals surge amid growing scrutiny after major fraud cases," Fox News, January 13, 2026.
- Maya C. Miller, "Gov. Gavin Newsom's top staffer faces public corruption charges in an alleged scheme with four others," CalMatters, November 13, 2025.