Government at every level works best when there are checks and balances in place to ensure programs funded with taxpayer dollars provide the best bang for our buck.

Those checks and balances also include ensuring employees – whether they are public or private sector employees – involved in these programs are able to raise concerns when something does not look right without fear of retaliation.

Sadly, during the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the out-of-control Newsom Administration has paid out billions of tax dollars in secretive no-bid contracts under the guise of curbing the pandemic. Using powers gained under the pandemic state of emergency, Gov. Newsom has entered into far too many no-bid contracts that have received minimal to no public scrutiny. Many, such as the contract with PerkinElmer at the Valencia Branch Lab, have been auto-renewed without any oversight or accountability.

In October 2020, the Newsom Administration announced a $1.7 billion contract to the Valencia Branch Laboratory with great fanfare,  boasting that the lab would process 100,000 COVID tests a day and turn the results around within 48 hours. Since then, we have learned the lab has been riddled with serious problems and never met the goals set out in its contract, yet it was quietly auto-renewed late last year.

In addition to the poor performance, whistleblowers exposed unlicensed lab techs sleeping on the job, a lack of supervision over untrained staff, contaminated tests, swapped samples, testing errors, a high rate of “inconclusive” results, and inaccurate results being given to people with no process for correcting the problem. Some samples were brought into the bathroom before being tested. Horrifying.

While the Newsom Administration feigned outrage and promised to conduct its own investigation, it delayed releasing the results for months. I had been calling for the release of the report and urging the Administration to hold off on the renewal until all details were known. Conveniently, the report, which was critical of the lab and supported the whistleblower allegations, was not released until after the contract was auto-renewed in the dead of night.

Furthermore, Californians would not be aware of the Valencia lab fiasco had whistleblowers not risked their careers to expose the lab’s glaring deficiencies. They deserve the same protections as other state workers who call attention to grievous problems at a state agency.

Oversight and accountability are sorely lacking in this process, which is why I have introduced two important measures that will add accountability to no-bid contracts and expand whistleblower protections to those individuals brave enough to come forward and expose fraud or waste by contractors.

Senate Constitutional Amendment (SCA) 7  will increase oversight by requiring no-bid contracts of $25 million or more entered into on or after January 1, 2023 to be subject to an oversight hearing of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee prior to any renewal or extension of the contract. This would ensure that no-bid contracts are not simply auto-renewed without the opportunity for public input, discussion, and a robust debate about the performance of these providers.

Senate Bill 947 will foster accountability by empowering employees of these no-bid contracts to report fraud, waste, abuse, and improper activity, free from fear of retaliation by granting them the same whistleblower protections already afforded to state employees.

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Inadequate contracting decisions by the Newsom Administration in critical areas such as COVID-19 test processing have led to massive waste, left the state vulnerable to fraud, and even worse, hamstrung our ability to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Recently, we learned the Newsom Administration again secretly negotiated a massive no-bid contract. This time with Kaiser Permanente to expand its Medi-Cal coverage area, raising many questions about how this will impact the management of California’s Medi-Cal program. Without putting checks and balances into place, this trend will continue.

Transparent government is good government. While many politicians talk about the importance of checks and balances, in the case of no-bid contracts, it is just talk. If Newsom and Democrat leaders in the Legislature believe in the importance of government transparency and accountability, they must do more than talk. They should support SCA 7 and SB 947. I look forward to working with them to create this extra layer of accountability that taxpayers demand and deserve.

Scott Wilk is the California State Senate Republican Leader. He represents the 21st Senate District.