Three state workers, including the daughter of a Sacramento-area assemblyman, could lose their jobs because a personnel audit found that they were hired under questionable circumstances at an agency riddled by nepotism.

The targeted employees include the daughter of Assemblyman Jim Cooper, D-Elk Grove, and the son of a former staff member to Board of Equalization member George Runner.

They were identified by their initials in a new audit that detailed nepotism in the Board of Equalization, the tax agency that lawmakers gutted in June after a series of audits showed that it failed to allocate taxes properly and that its leaders had allowed elected board members to intervene inappropriately in its daily operations.

The audit by the State Personnel Board showed that 17.5 percent of the agency’s employees appeared to have a relative on staff in the organization.