California Children and Families Commission: Its Poor Contracting Practices Resulted in Questionable and Inappropriate Payments to Contractors and Violations of State Law and Policies
Source: California State Auditor/Bureau of State Audits Summary of Report 2006-114 - October 2006
The California Children and Families Commission (state commission) contracts with media and public relations companies to conduct mass media campaigns related to various issues involving early childhood development and school readiness. We found a number of problems with the way it awards and manages these contracts. For example, the state commission allowed one of its media contractors to circumvent the payment provisions of a contract by paying invoices totaling $673,000 between February 2002 and December 2003 for fees and expenses of some of the contractor's employees. These payments violated the terms of the contract, which stated that payment was to be based solely on commissions applied to the cost of advertising placed by the contractor and prohibited the charging of other services or fees. As a result, the state commission paid for services it had not contracted for, effectively preventing that money from being used to further the other activities allowed by the contract, namely purchasing printed ad space or broadcast media time.