Can a plaintiff bring an action to prevent a government from making illegal expenditures?

To hold otherwise would violate another rule of statutory constructionthat when interpreting a statute, we may not read into the provision language that does not appear. (Doe v. City of Los Angeles (2007) 42 Cal.4th 531, 545, 67 Cal.Rptr.3d 330, 169 P.3d 559.) Given the plain and broad meaning of illegal expenditures, we would have to add the following language to prevent its application here: that taxpayers may bring actions to prevent a government's illegal expenditures except when the illegal conduct is also a criminal act.