At the beginning of the pandemic, masks become one of the biggest commodities in 2020. At the time, COVID was surging in cases and there were not enough masks to go around. In California, the government was supposed to provide those masks when they contracted companies to produce them. However, those masks never made it and now there are lawsuits going on and people are asking a lot of questions.
A big problem is that all of those contracts for masks were no-bid contracts. No-bid contracts have become a hotly debated topic in recent years as a number of projects that have used no-bid contracts have gone way over budget and have wasted taxpayer dollars. The mask one is certainly no exception. $1.6 billion dollars as spent in taxpayer money on no-bid contracts for masks that never made it to us. Much of the blame rests on State Controller Betty Yee. Yee’s job is to be the chief overseer of California’s financials and how money is spent in the state. Yee not only lost the $1.6 billion but also pushed a massively flawed $600 million contract.
Susan Shelley from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association said that a lack of oversight during the pandemic due to the state of emergency is the root cause of the lost money, “What happened was everybody saw giant pots of money with no oversight, no competitive bidding, no paperwork, and they all started to just grub around in the money” Shelley said to KUSI. Shelley referenced the $600 million deal that Betty Yee oversaw and that case now has multiple lawsuits. The company that was awarded the contract had only been in business for two days and was wired $457 million of the $600 million. Their bank flagged the transfer as fraud. Now, the company is suing their bank, that bank is suing the state bank, and the state bank is suing the state.
All of this could have been solved, or at least avoided, had the state government not allowed no-bid contracts during the state of emergency. Because of that, little oversight was going on and once again taxpayer money was wasted by the California government.
Photo Cred: Rich Pedroncelli/ Associated Press
