By Ashley Zavala At KCRA 3

September 17, 2024

SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

The California Legislature this year quietly spent $5.2 million to have granite mined in the Central Valley, shipped to Italy to be finished into bricks and sent back to the state to be used on a part of the exterior of the eventual new Capitol Annex building.

The stonework, which KCRA 3 was the first to report on Tuesday, is a small part of the $1.2 billion Capitol Annex Project, which will someday house the new offices of state lawmakers, the governor and the lieutenant governor. The project has been at the center of controversy since it started in 2018, with transparency concerns and a lawsuit filed over environmental issues related to the project.

A small group of people inside the Legislature, referred to as the Joint Rules Committee, has been making decisions about several aspects of the project, including the stonework. Multiple sources who spoke on the condition they remain anonymous said the committee’s unelected staff, and not the lawmakers, has been doing the decision-making.

In December of last year, the committee moved forward with the stonework project that began early this year. It first involved mining 2 million pounds of granite from a quarry operated by Coldspring in Raymond, California. The granite was then shipped by boat to Italy to be fabricated by the Santucci Group, a company located in Carrara in the central coastal region of the country. Project officials confirmed the rocks were still in the fabrication phase as of Tuesday, with the completed stone expected to return to California later this year.

Project leaders noted the stone should match the exterior of the current historic state capitol’s west side. That granite was sourced from Folsom and Penryn, according to the State Capitol Museum.

Read more at KCRA 3