The attorney general had forwarded the report for possible prosecution, but District Attorney Jan Scully said in a letter Thursday that investigations involving state officials have historically been handled by the attorney general for at least the last three decades.

The attorney general found that senior officials at the Department of Parks and Recreation helped keep millions of dollars secret from state finance officials for more than a decade, even as up to 70 parks were threatened with closure last year because of budget cuts.

Scully said it would be difficult to prove criminal wrongdoing, however, as the funds were disclosed to the state controller, no one profited, and the money was never spent.

“Both the reason and the basis for referral to our office is unclear. There is no indication who your office considers to be suspects, and if so, what crime they may have committed,” said the three-page letter signed by Scully and Assistant District Attorney Albert Locher.

Lynda Gledhill, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Kamala Harris, said she couldn’t immediately comment. Richard Stapler, spokesman for the California Natural Resources Agency that oversees the parks department, said he hadn’t seen the letter and couldn’t comment.

The county prosecutors said in their letter that the report and the way the investigation was conducted “all point to the inference that the Attorney General has concluded this is not a criminal matter.”

Though several top parks officials, including Director Ruth Coleman, resigned or were dismissed, the attorney general’s report found no employees who stole or wrongly spent any of the money. It did find that senior officials deliberately decided not to report the additional funds to the state Department of Finance, which helps the governor craft write the state budget.

Sacramento County’s prosecutors returned the file to the attorney general’s office.

“If your office conducts a criminal investigation and then determines that it appears a crime has been committed…our office will then consider whether it is proper to file the charges,” they wrote.

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By Don Thompson