Caltrans caught hiding no bid contracts

“The California Department of Transportation shielded from public view details of at least 290 contracts worth more than $13 million, though there is no record the agency was given authority to strike the information from state records, an Associated Press investigation has found. The contracts—labeled “confidential” and in many cases awarded without competitive bidding—went out between 2002 and 2006 and ranged from $10,000 to more than $1 million. In some cases, they authorized payments of up to $7,000 per day to experts in various fields for their testimony or legal opinions…. Robert Stern, president of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies and a former general counsel at the California Fair Political Practices Commission, said the situation raises questions about who is watching over billions in taxpayer dollars. ‘Who is minding the store? Why aren’t they paying attention to this?’ Stern asked. ‘If nobody is watching, people have an incentive to pay more and could be fleecing the taxpayers’. “