Assembly budget hearings get under way today to review the special fees collected by scores of state agencies. The hearings come amid a scandal involving the Department of Parks and Recreation, which had squirreled away $54 million in secret funds.

The Department of Finance last week concluded an audit of other state agencies that found accounting errors, but no other hidden funds. A separate joint committee has voted to conduct its own audit of Parks and Rec. 

Paul Fong, an Assemblyman from Cupertino, pushed for the investigation.
 
"This audit will be a first step toward finding out what happened, how it happened and making sure it will never happen again," Fong said.

The joint audit committee wants to know how the department of Parks and Recreation hid the money, and how it underreported funds to state officials for more than a decade.