Once I started masking California politics for the Sacramento Union a half-century in the past, I paired up with one other reporter, Okay.W. Leeto probe how the Legislature spent cash on inner operations.
Okay.W., brief for Kyung Received, had already made waves by revealing {that a} legislator who owned a journey company had been utilizing the state-provided phone in her district workplace for costly transcontinental calls to arrange resort and journey reservations for her purchasers.
The Legislature ought to have censured the member for misusing taxpayer cash. As a substitute, it responded by making it nearly unattainable for reporters to entry monetary info.
The lame response inspired Lee to double down on his reporting. He found a again door to legislative funds by reviewing data of invoices within the State Controller’s Workplace.
That was within the pre-digital period, after all, so he and I spent numerous hours looking out via the paperwork. What we discovered — plus some revelations from an inside supply — resulted in a collection of articles about lavish spending.
It included shopping for workplace furnishings, reworking and different companies by favored distributors with out bidding, in addition to a free kitchen makeover from the transforming contractor for the legislative worker who managed contracts. Legislators additionally used legislative sergeants-at-arms as chauffeurs, private errand-runners and even petsitters.
One bill was significantly irksome. The Meeting paid an enormous invoice from a automobile rental enterprise as a result of a legislator had parked one among its automobiles at Los Angeles Worldwide Airport for a month and forgot about it.
Our revelations have been so embarrassing that Leo McCarthy, speaker of the state Meeting, agreed to permit restricted entry to the Legislature’s funds — nonetheless lower than the total open data regulation governing different state companieshowever a bit higher than full secrecy.
Throughout these weeks of poring via sheaves of invoices, I found that Lee was not solely an especially clever and ferociously aggressive journalist however probably the most fascinating and totally distinctive individual I had ever met.
He was born in Korea — then a Japanese colony — in 1928. He attended school there and immigrated to america in 1950 after, he stated, barely escaping demise as a result of he was a kamikaze pilot in coaching when World Conflict II led to 1945. Lee coated the civil rights motion within the South throughout the Sixties and wrote about political corruption in West Virginia and the plight of Appalachian coal miners earlier than coming to Sacramento and becoming a member of the Sacramento Union workers.
Whereas investigating political malfeasance was Lee’s occupation, he was preoccupied with the plight of a fellow Korean immigrant, Chol Soo Lee, who had been convicted of a 1973 gang-related homicide in Chinatown San Francisco and sentenced to demise. Through the years, Lee wrote greater than 100 articles concerning the case, lastly leading to a brand new trial, acquittal and freedom. His work impressed the 1989 film “True Believer.”
It appeared to Lee’s mates that he was at all times on the point of succumbing to sickness. He survived bouts of liver and abdomen most cancers, present process a liver transplant in 1992, which was one thing of a miracle on condition that liver illness had claimed each of his dad and mom and all six of his siblings.
By means of all of his well being crises, Lee remained dedicated to aggressive journalism — even founding the English version of the Korea Instances in Los Angeles — and to recognition of the contributions Asian Individuals have been making to California. He additionally continued to push me and different journalists to delve into political malpractice together with his attribute bluntness.
Lee died on March 8three months shy of his 97th birthday. It’s superb he lasted that lengthy and much more superb that he completed a lot. This column solely touches a number of highlights in a life that deserves a spot within the California Corridor of Fame.
