Here are all the baseball, basketball and football games California politicians went to for free last year

Be­ing an elec­ted of­fi­cial in Cali­for­nia has its perks. Want proof? Con­sider all the free tick­ets to sport­ing events that mem­bers of the Le­gis­lature ac­cep­ted last year as gifts from util­it­ies, uni­ons, law firms and oth­er busi­nesses.

The Times tal­lied the free base­ball, foot­ball, bas­ket­ball and golf games that state law­makers at­ten­ded in 2015 — and who paid for them. The in­form­a­tion is pub­lic via “state­ment of eco­nom­ic in­terest” forms law­makers fill out every year, of­ten re­ferred to as Form 700s.

The dis­clos­ures de­tail le­gis­lat­ors’ per­son­al fin­an­cial in­terests, in­clud­ing gifts. The pub­lic doc­u­ments are kept on­line as PDF doc­u­ments by the state Fair Polit­ic­al Prac­tices Com­mis­sion in an ef­fort to pro­mote trans­par­ency and ac­count­ab­il­ity of pub­lic of­fi­cials. The in­form­a­tion is not eas­ily searched or sor­ted , and the form al­lows politi­cians to be less than pre­cise in their dis­clos­ure.