As questions persist on the processes that precede the awarding of no-bid state contracts in California, new legislation seeks to provide objective financial input before conferring such business opportunities.
The legislation introduced last week by Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, would require, in SCA 7, that no-bid contracts of $25 million or more first be subject to a legislative oversight hearing. A companion measure, SB 947, would provide whistleblower protections to those reporting fraud, waste, abuse, or other improper activity involved with the contract work.
“Under the guise of the pandemic, the legislature must crack down on this governor who has the habit of negotiating no-bid state contracts in secret,” Wilk said in an email response to the Northern California Record.
“There are no laws in the books right now that require public oversight hearings on renewals of no-bid state contracts, so my measures provide transparency and accountability to this secretive process,” Wilk said. “It is my experience that the loudest objectors to simple oversight measures usually have the most to hide, and I believe California deserves better than that.”
The legislation will help protect against waste of taxpayer dollars, Wilk said. In 2020, for example, the Newsom administration granted a $1.7 billion contract to PerkinElmer for a COVID-19 testing operation at Valencia Labs, where whistleblowers revealed a series of testing failures, CBS 13 reported.
Last October, the no-bid state contract for Valencia Labs was auto-renewed days before it was scheduled to expire, according to a Feb. 9 news release from Wilk’s office.
“To this day, the lab continues to lag behind its promised testing capacity and test sample turnaround timeline. The California State Legislature recently approved $82 million for the troubled contract,” the release said.
It is estimated that in 2020 California entered into more than 8,000 no-bid contracts.
SCA 7 and SB 947 are scheduled for referral to Senate policy committees for consideration.