California Department of Justice Hid Millions in Contracts

Michael R. Blood of the Associated Press found that the California Department of Justice improperly concealed tens of millions of dollars worth of contracts with lobbyists, consultants, legal firms - even couriers and parking garages - in violation of its own confidentiality rules. "An internal agency review, conducted at AP's request, found information on scores of contracts, many of them no-bid, was erroneously labeled "confidential" and omitted from computerized state records, shielding it from public view." Among the wrongly classified contracts included two no-bid contracts, worth as much as $489,000, for Washington lobbyists The Ferguson Group, more than $1 million in no-bid contracts for parking spaces for agency workers and a $132,000 contract to the research group WestEd of San Francisco for a survey of students.