Davis seems to be taking the LLA Slimes advice on dealing with this .. uh ..challege.
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Posted on 05/03/2002 7:23:46 AM PDT by randita
Davis ousts aide in Oracle flap
CAMPAIGN DONATION: Adviser took check while negotiating tech deal
DOCUMENT SEARCH: Several state departments told to halt shredding
Robert Salladay, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Friday, May 3, 2002
Sacramento -- Gov. Gray Davis forced his chief technology adviser to resign Thursday after he admitted meeting an Oracle lobbyist at a bar and accepting a $25,000 check for the governor's campaign while negotiations over an Oracle software contract were taking place.
Arun Baheti resigned unexpectedly on a day in which Oracle offered to cancel the controversial $95 million contract with California, state police snooped out allegations of document shredding and Republicans intensified their efforts to make the scandal a campaign issue.
Baheti's departure as California's director of e-government was punctuated by the governor's suspension of Elias Cortez, the embattled director of the Department of Information Technology and a chief cheerleader for the Oracle contract.
The governor's office also dispatched the California Highway Patrol to Cortez's office to "secure all shredders and trash." Davis' chief lawyer said he received a report that documents were being shredded in the department, and four other technology and contracting departments were ordered to stop routine shredding and retain their documents.
The shredding in Cortez's office -- whether routine or not -- and the shakeup in the Davis administration coincided with a Republican assault on the governor and his aides for their part in approving the no-bid Oracle contract for database software.
The May 2001 contract could saddle taxpayers with up to $41 million in extra costs for software few state agencies say they need, the state auditor reported. Barry Keene, the director of General Services who signed the contract, was pressured into resigning last week, and the Legislature is poised to abolish the information technology office.
"Today's reports raise legitimate questions about whether this is more than just incompetence, but possibly corruption," said Republican candidate Bill Simon, who is running against Davis. "People are starting to ask, at what point does this become a coverup?"
FEDERAL PROBE SOUGHT
Assembly Republicans asked Thursday for a federal investigation into the contracting scandal.
The governor repeatedly denied that campaign contributions are linked to his executive decisions. But Baheti's acceptance of a $25,000 check for the governor's re-election campaign amid the Oracle negotiations is likely to compound the perception that Davis does favors for contributors -- an allegation Davis' chief political adviser says is ridiculous.
Baheti said he was approached by Oracle's Sacramento lobbyist, Ravi Mehta, about Oracle making a contribution to the governor's campaign some time before the contract was signed, top-level Capitol sources said. Baheti said he did not solicit the contribution, the sources said.
Baheti and Mehta met later at a Capitol-area bar and exchanged the check, which Baheti sent by Federal Express to the governor's campaign office in Los Angeles, the sources said.
Even though the exchange came after work hours, Davis administration employees are not allowed to handle campaign checks for the governor.
"It is certainly a violation of the spirit of the governor's policy from Day One that he does not want full-time state employees involved in our fund- raising efforts," said Garry South, the governor's chief political adviser.
There is some question, sources said, about when Baheti actually received the check from Oracle. The date on the check is from March, two months before the Oracle contract was signed, but the campaign received the check on June 5 - - five days after the contract was approved.
South denied that there was any connection between the contribution and the Oracle deal. "The governor had nothing to do with the Oracle contract, and the governor didn't know about the check. He doesn't know about the checks coming in here on a daily basis," he said.
And an Oracle spokesman, Jim Finn, also said there was no link: "There is no connection between our political contributions and our sales activities. They are kept entirely separate."
ORACLE MIGHT UNDO DEAL
Finn said Oracle offered Thursday to rescind the $95 million contract with the state, even though the Redwood City company continues to believe it will provide California with savings in the long run.
Finn said Oracle made a similar offer months ago but has not received a response from the state. Hilary McLean, a Davis spokeswoman, said the administration has asked the attorney general to review the contract but knew of no offer from Oracle to cancel the deal.
CONTRIBUTION IS LEGAL
There is nothing illegal about Baheti receiving a campaign check or Mehta offering the money.
Mehta is the former chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission, the state's campaign watchdog. Mehta was appointed in 1995 by then-Gov. Pete Wilson, but fellow commissioners stripped him of power a year later amid charges of questionable travel expenses and doing private legal work for Wilson's chief of staff.
Mehta and Baheti did not return calls for comment.
Baheti was an advocate of the now-disastrous Oracle deal, and he attended a critical meeting on May 24, 2001, with top administration officials about last- minute negotiations. Baheti has said so-called Enterprise Licensing Agreements similar to the one signed with Oracle are a good way to consolidate state contracts to save money.
But Baheti wrote in his resignation letter that he didn't examine the Oracle contract closely enough.
"It is apparent in retrospect that I should have more vociferously raised questions about the details" of the Oracle contract, Baheti wrote. "Had I asked more questions of DOIT and DGS (Department of General Services), they might have seen potential problems. For that, I must take responsibility."
Baheti's resignation letter does not mention the Oracle contribution or Mehta.
PHOTO ORDER DREW FIRE
A former managing director of the California Democratic Party and campaign worker for Davis, Baheti has run the office of e-government, which recently faced criticism for ordering about 100 state agencies to put Davis' photograph on their Web sites.
Baheti's office has been revamping the state's Internet portals and search engines to make them more "user friendly," he said, but Republicans called the plastering of Davis' face on every Web site a "campaign ploy."
Baheti's resignation was announced along with the suspension until further notice of Cortez, who Davis administration officials claim misled them into believing the Oracle contract had been thoroughly analyzed. Cortez has been called to testify Monday before a legislative audit committee.
Barry Goode, the governor's chief counsel, said Thursday that he immediately called the information technology office when he heard of the possible shredding, asked officials there to determine if any shredding had taken place and, "if so, to cease immediately."
Goode also called Attorney General Bill Lockyer to report the potential problem. "While we had no conclusive evidence that any shredding or destruction of documents occurred," Goode said, "the mere suggestion that it may have occurred has led us to take these steps."
Lockyer said he has asked a team of special agents, computer forensic specialists and attorneys from the criminal law division to remove equipment and paperwork from Cortez's 69-person office "to preserve evidence in our investigation."
ALL 24 SHREDDERS UNPLUGGED
A spokesman for the Department of Information Technology said that when the department heard from Goode, employees unplugged all 24 shredders. Kevin Terpstra, the spokesman, said the shredders are used to destroy confidential information sent to the department by state agencies.
"We were not shredding any legal documents," Terpstra said, "or any documents that had been requested by the attorney general or by the Legislature or by the Bureau of State Audits or through public records requests from the press."
Lawmakers said they were astonished to hear the department was shredding anything amid its biggest scandal to date.
"I don't know what was in those documents, but it seems pretty clear to me that when you're a state agency, especially one that knows it's under the microscope, you don't shred documents unless you've got something to hide," said state Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Marina Del Rey, a chief critic of the technology office.
E-mail Robert Salladay at bsalladay@sfchronicle.com.
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle Page A - 1
I can see why they have to give kickbacks to get contracts.
The classic evidence of a quid pro quo. The paper can only distort the event by using the headline and analysis to make it appear that Davis is part of the solution when its obvious this was part of an accepted scheme for his appointees.
What other DB would you choose if you could? Not sarcasm, but just an inquiry from a fellow database admin/user.
Davis seems to be taking the LLA Slimes advice on dealing with this .. uh ..challege.
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I'm sure it was just an oversight by the press. It didn't occur to them.
What say we, Freepers? Lets remind them. Use it in our headlines and our letters to the editor; ORACLEGATE!
And Ellison was one of Microsoft's biggest critics, too. You now REALLY openly wonder just how much under-the-table money Oracle gave to the Clinton Administration to expedite the US v. Microsoft case.
Davis is a micromanager. Nothing goes on without his explicit approval. He can't have it both ways. Either he's stupid or corrupt, and I don't think he's stupid.
Dump Davis!
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