Two California state senators, one Democrat, one Republican, spent nearly three hours Tuesday tearing into the state's top librarian and a now-defunct nonprofit over more than $1 million in taxpayer money that was supposed to put books in children's hands through Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. Instead, the cash flowed to consultants, a marketing firm, and a bookkeeper, with little to show for it.
State Senators Sasha Renée Peréz, a Democrat from Pasadena, and Shannon Grove, a Republican from Fresno, directed their sharpest criticism at California State Librarian Greg Lucas and the Strong Reader Partnership, a nonprofit the State Library itself created to administer the program. The bipartisan frustration was plain: lawmakers from both parties agreed the money trail didn't add up.
The hearing follows a March session that examined roughly $650,000 in unaccounted-for spending tied to the Imagination Library. Tuesday's hearing, as the New York Post reported, widened the scope considerably, with the total now pegged at about $1.1 million funneled through the nonprofit after lawmakers had already moved to claw back the bulk of the program's funding.
In 2022, California launched a $68.2 million child literacy effort. The State Library set up the Strong Reader Partnership to help run it. After a slow rollout, lawmakers intervened, redirecting the bulk of the funds to the Dollywood Foundation, the organization that actually operates Dolly Parton's Imagination Library nationwide.
But before that transfer happened, the Strong Reader Partnership managed to spend about $1.1 million. Roughly $1 million of that went to just three firms.
Sage Strategies, a consulting outfit whose CEO, Sonya Harris, also served as the Strong Reader Partnership's executive director, collected $326,250.99. A committee report found that invoices for Sage's work often listed only "general consulting", with no explanation of what was actually done. Lawmakers called the invoices "very vague."
Shipyard, a marketing firm, received $581,708.55. That sum included $125,000 for a "web digital landing page." Senator Grove told the hearing the webpage does not exist.
Lotus Financial Solution billed $110,000 for bookkeeping, including a $40,000 setup fee and $7,000-per-month charges. The nonprofit it was keeping books for handled fewer than 100 total transactions.
On top of that, lawmakers found the nonprofit had overstated payments by $101,788.50 to Sage Strategies and by $10,974.50 to the law firm Delfino Madden, both due to double counting. The Strong Reader Partnership even bounced checks and incurred overdraft fees for insufficient funds.
Grove did not mince words. She told Lucas and the nonprofit's representatives flatly during Tuesday's hearing:
"Just frankly, you guys failed."
She pressed further on what the program had actually accomplished, pointing out that the nonprofit could not demonstrate its own results independent of the Dollywood Foundation's broader work. As Grove put it:
"You can't tell me what students you enrolled. You're piggybacking and say you get credit for what Dolly Parton's Imagination Library did."
That distinction matters. The Imagination Library itself reported real numbers: between July 2023 and July 2024, the program enrolled 85,401 children in California, including 46,530 new sign-ups. Since June 2023, the program says it has reached 163,104 kids and delivered 2.9 million books statewide. The initial $1.5 million in state funding covered more than 1 million books.
The books got delivered. But the Strong Reader Partnership, the middleman, burned through more than a million dollars without producing clear evidence of what it contributed beyond what the Dollywood Foundation was already doing.
Perhaps the most troubling detail to emerge from Tuesday's hearing involves lobbying. Peréz and Grove cited email records showing that Sonya Harris and the Strong Reader Partnership lobbied against a bill that would have removed the nonprofit's control over the book project's money. The contract between the State Library and the Strong Reader Partnership explicitly forbade the nonprofit from lobbying on legislation.
So the nonprofit that was supposed to deliver books to children instead spent time, and possibly resources, fighting to keep its grip on the funding pipeline. That is not what taxpayers signed up for when Sacramento committed $68.2 million to get kids reading.
Peréz, the committee's Democratic chair, acknowledged the hearing produced some cooperation but said the answers fell short. After the session, she stated:
"While I appreciate their participation in these public hearings, important gaps remain between the information the committee has been requesting and the documentation and responses provided."
She added a pointed expectation for the future:
"Mr. Lucas, moving forward, I just want to highlight that it's my expectation that the State Library, when they are overseeing a nonprofit, that they are providing tighter oversight and accountability around these issues."
And she framed the stakes in terms any taxpayer would recognize:
"We have an obligation to use state funds responsibly and transparently."
The State Library also failed to send the Dollywood Foundation a required $61 million-plus within the 45-day window the law required. That delay, on top of the spending mess, raises its own questions about whether the State Library treated this program with the seriousness a $68.2 million commitment demands.
The Strong Reader Partnership is now defunct. The money is largely gone. The consultants were paid. The marketing firm got $125,000 for a website that apparently doesn't exist. The bookkeeper charged $110,000 to track fewer than 100 transactions. And the executive director of the nonprofit was simultaneously the CEO of the consulting firm billing it for vague services.
None of this required a partisan lens to see clearly. A Democratic senator and a Republican senator sat in the same hearing, looked at the same invoices, and reached the same conclusion: oversight failed, money vanished, and accountability is still missing.
What makes this case sting is the program it was supposed to serve. Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is one of the most popular and effective children's literacy programs in the country. It enjoys broad public goodwill precisely because it does something simple and tangible, it mails free books to kids. California committed serious money to expand it. The Dollywood Foundation delivered millions of books. The middleman nonprofit delivered invoices.
The open questions are significant. What specific work did Sage Strategies perform for $326,000? Where is the $125,000 website? Why was the nonprofit lobbying against a bill when its contract prohibited it? Why couldn't the State Library meet its own 45-day deadline for transferring $61 million to the Dollywood Foundation? And what documentation, if any, will ever close the gap between what lawmakers have asked for and what they've received?
Sacramento found a way to take a beloved, straightforward children's literacy program and turn it into a case study in bureaucratic waste. The kids got their books, no thanks to the middlemen who skimmed more than a million dollars off the top for work nobody can describe.