California state's former insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara's taxpayer-funded travel across the world been the focus of an investigation to determine if they had a business purpose of the 'mission critical' trips

"If the insurance commissioner's office isn't able to provide answers as to the government purpose of this travel, I think it's absolutely appropriate for us to move forward requesting an audit so we can get answers for the taxpayers. Again this is about transparency -- it's about good government. It's something that Californians absolutely deserve," Assm. Wallis said.

ABC7 reported earlier this week that Commissioner Lara made at least 46 trips across the country and all over the world since 2019, from the U.K. to Singapore to Glasgow, and Dubai. Receipts show at least 11 fully taxpayer funded 'work-related' excursions to places like Bogota, Paris, and a $14,000 'mission-critical' request to go to Chile.

Many trips that caused him to miss a slew of key insurance hearings since 2019.

https://abc7news.com/post/lawmakers-push-audit-ca-insurance-commissioners-travel-government-purpose-trips-isnt-made-public/16088308/

That was March 29th, 2025

Yesterday's new was: 

Records justifying CA insurance commissioner's taxpayer-funded travel missing