ABC Managers Misused State Vehicles; Supervisor Condoned It
Summary
California's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control let four managers store state vehicles at home for months at a time -- one for 208 nights against a 72-night legal cap -- at an estimated combined cost of $16,217.53. Their supervisor told investigators the practice was allowed, a December 2025 California State Auditor investigation found.
A commute that cost the State $820 -- and the story didn't stop there
From September 2024 through February 2025, the manager identified as Manager A drove a state vehicle on the 62-mile round-trip commute between home and the office on at least 17 occasions, making no work stops along the way. Manager A initially denied ever doing this; telematics data -- GPS and speed logs built into most ABC vehicles -- showed otherwise, and Manager A eventually acknowledged taking the vehicle home to save time. In just that six-month window, the misuse totaled 1,216 miles at a cost to the State of $820. If Manager A drove this way since being appointed to the position in 2022, the auditor estimated⧉ the true cost could run as high as $4,952 -- and cautioned it could be higher still, since several other questionable trips could not be confirmed as work-related.
Telematics also caught a child's school run
The same records showed Manager A's state vehicle stopping at an elementary school 30 times over the same six months. Manager A acknowledged using the vehicle to transport a child to and from school on roughly 20 to 22 of those occasions, without a supervisor's approval and while aware it wasn't allowed -- including trips made solely to drop off items the child had forgotten. Manager A also stored state vehicles at home on 164 nights in 2024, more than double the 72-night annual threshold at which state law requires a Vehicle Home Storage Permit; Manager A never had one and didn't qualify for one.
The supervisor called it standard practice
When investigators interviewed Manager A's supervisor, the supervisor said the arrangement was allowable -- and confirmed knowing that Manager A and other managers under the supervisor's watch used state vehicles to commute, and that the supervisor had authorized it. That admission, itself a violation of the same state law⧉ against misusing state resources, opened the door to three more managers. The supervisor told auditors, 'we have allowed that' -- language the report says implied the practice was common across the division, and perhaps the whole department.
View data as table
| Manager A | 4,952.2 |
|---|---|
| Manager B | 8,974.8 |
| Manager C | 702.8 |
| Manager D | 1,587.7 |
Manager B was the heaviest user: at least 43 commuting trips in the same six-month window, 2,618 miles, and $1,776 in real, documented misuse -- before any extrapolation. Projected back to Manager B's appointment date the same way the auditor projected Manager A's, that comes to an estimated $8,974.83, more than half of the four managers' $16,217.53 combined total. Managers C and D added smaller amounts, $702.81 and $1,587.73 respectively, rounding out a total the auditor's own methodology sums to the dollar.
View data as table
| Manager A (2024) | 164 |
|---|---|
| Manager B (2024) | 208 |
| Manager C (2024) | 157 |
| Manager D (Feb-May 2025) | 104 |
| Legal limit before a permit is required | 72 |
Every one of the four managers blew past the 72-night limit, and by wide margins: Manager B stored a vehicle at home 208 nights in 2024 alone -- nearly three times the threshold -- followed by Manager A at 164, Manager C at 157, and Manager D at 104 nights in a review window covering only four months. None had a home storage permit, and none met the qualifications to get one.
What ABC says it's doing about it
The auditor told ABC to review the four managers' vehicle use and recoup the cost of any misuse, take corrective action against them, train the supervisor and managers on the vehicle-use policy they apparently hadn't absorbed, and check whether the problem extends beyond this one supervisor's team. ABC's written response⧉ says it completed its own investigation, placed one manager on administrative leave pending further executive review, and will require executive-level sign-off before any employee can store a vehicle at home until training and stronger controls are in place. ABC also said it was analyzing vehicle-use data statewide to see how far the pattern extends beyond the four managers named in this report.
The takeaway
- A commute rule violation multiplied by four, unnoticed by anyone above the direct supervisor. One manager's misuse became four once investigators asked the right question -- and the common thread across all of them was the same supervisor's sign-off, not four managers independently deciding to break the same rule.
- The controls that would have caught this already existed on paper. Telematics tracked every trip; the 72-night permit threshold was already state law; the vehicle-travel-log requirement was already policy. What was missing was anyone above the supervisor checking whether those existing controls were being followed.
- The $16,217.53 estimate is itself a floor, by the auditor's own admission. It only covers four managers under one supervisor, projects only from documented commute patterns, and the auditor flagged that Manager A's true total 'may have been even greater' than what its own math captured -- before ABC's promised statewide review of whether the pattern runs wider.
The report identifies the employees only as Manager A, Manager B, Manager C, and Manager D, and refers to their shared supervisor by role, not name; this piece does the same. The $16,217.53 figure and each manager's individual dollar amount are the State Auditor's own extrapolated estimates -- projections of documented misuse rates back to each manager's appointment date, priced at Standard Mileage Rates -- not amounts ABC has necessarily billed or recovered as of the report's December 2025 publication. This case (I2025-0539) is one of five substantiated whistleblower investigations in the same State Auditor report (I2025-1); separate BlackLeaf coverage examines three of the other four, at the Employment Development Department, the California Air Resources Board, and CalVet's Yountville Veterans Home.
Sources(2) ▾
- California State Auditor, Investigations of Improper Activities by State Agencies and Employees (Report I2025-1) (2025-12-12) — A California State Auditor investigative digest, published under the California Whistleblower Protection Act, covering five substantiated whistleblower complaints across five separate state agencies. This piece uses the fourth case, Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) vehicle misuse (Case I2025-0539, pp. 21-26) -- one of two cases in this report BlackLeaf had not yet covered separately. Fetched directly and read with pdftotext -layout. auditor.ca.gov · original document
- California State Auditor, Whistleblower Complaint Information -- California State Auditor (2026-07-21) — The State Auditor's own current whistleblower-intake page: hotline number, hours, online complaint form, and mailing address for reporting suspected improper governmental activity. Used only to source the call-to-action, re-fetched this iteration. auditor.ca.gov · original document
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At California's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control⧉, a manager used a state-owned vehicle for a 62-mile round-trip commute and to drive a child to and from elementary school -- and when auditors traced the pattern up the chain, they found the manager's own supervisor had known about it, and about three other managers doing the same thing, and had let it continue. A California State Auditor investigation⧉, opened on a whistleblower complaint and published in December 2025, put the estimated combined cost of the four managers' vehicle misuse at $16,217.53.