California High-Speed Rail Pauses Travel Payments After Rides to CEO’s Street

California’s High-Speed Rail Authority has paused travel payments to four consulting firms after billing records documented repeated late-night rides to or from the Folsom street where agency CEO Ian Choudri owns a home. The records establish that the publicly funded trips occurred, but they do not identify everyone who traveled, show what work took place or establish whether Choudri was present.

The payment pause is part of a broader response to an inspector general’s findings that the authority routinely failed to enforce advance-approval and reimbursement rules. According to a subsequent authority update reported by CalMatters, the agency has begun reviewing claims and training staff, executives and consultants on its travel policies. Its board also voted 7-2 to remove Choudri’s sole authority to sign and manage contracts below $25 million, requiring in-house attorneys to approve new contracts and changes to existing ones.

Receipts and travel forms told different stories

The late-night rides emerged from a review of nearly 6,000 pages of invoices and expense claims submitted by financial adviser KPMG and law firm Nossaman for work between September 2024 and January 2026. The records included 12 rides involving consultants Thierry Prate and Brent Butzin to or from Choudri’s residential street, as well as another 12 rides connected to nearby restaurants and bars.

Many pickups occurred late at night or early in the morning, including two after 1 a.m. One KPMG explanation characterized a ride to the residence as “related to work with Ian.” That description asserted a business connection without documenting the meeting, participants, deliverable or reason the travel was necessary. Choudri, Butzin and Prate did not respond to requests for comment reported with the records investigation.

Five of Butzin’s travel forms described meetings at the authority’s offices in Sacramento, while the attached receipts showed travel to restaurants and other locations in Folsom. That mismatch is a significant invoice-control problem even without a finding that any specific trip was personal. A reviewer relying on the stated meeting location would see a different travel pattern from the one recorded by the rideshare receipts.

Advance approval was missing across much of the sample

The authority’s independent inspector general examined approximately $1.15 million of more than $2 million in travel costs paid to four consulting firms over two fiscal years. The review found that $680,500 lacked documented advance approval, while $592,900 was unallowable under state regulations or contract terms. The total travel spending and the unallowable amount are separate figures: auditors reviewed only about half of the more than $2 million spent.

The four contractors were KPMG, Nossaman, AECOM-Fluor Joint Venture and SYSTRA/TYPSA Joint Venture. Together, their work covers financial advice, legal services, program-delivery support, and track and systems design. Travel is a relatively small category within more than $250 million going to the firms over two fiscal years, but it provides a clear test of whether basic authorization controls function before public money is disbursed.

Travel charges usually contain discrete, checkable information: date, time, origin, destination, fare class, receipt and stated business purpose. If those fields are inconsistent or incomplete, an approver should be able to stop payment and request documentation. More complicated professional-services invoices covering labor hours, technical analysis or program management can be substantially harder to validate after the fact.

The inspector general also found that contract managers sometimes paid travel expenses because an executive had requested a trip, or because staff assumed senior management wanted it. The CEO could not override state regulations or the terms of a contract. A functional control system therefore requires more than a written rule: reviewers must have both the information and institutional authority to reject a charge regardless of who requested the underlying work.

The corrective-action test comes before the next trip

The authority says only travel that is preapproved, within contract scope and consistent with state regulations will qualify for reimbursement. It is revising its process, training personnel and reviewing claims to recover improper costs. KPMG has said it is examining the expenses and will reimburse the authority as appropriate.

Consistent controls also protect contractors by defining eligible locations, reimbursement limits and required documentation before costs are incurred. A uniform travel-request form, a list of approved consultant office locations and a specific business justification would give reviewers an auditable chain from the work requirement to the final receipt.

The inspector general plans to assess the corrective actions after March 2027. By then, the most meaningful measure will not be the wording of the revised policy, but whether a reviewer can withhold reimbursement when a destination, timestamp or receipt does not match the approved business purpose even when the trip is attributed to an executive request.

By Thomas Caldwell — AMI’s senior editor for mechanical and mobility engineering, covering vehicle electronics, systems integration, electrification, chassis systems, propulsion, and safety policy.