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Gov. Gavin Newsom quietly released the long-sought contract for California’s controversial no-bid diaper deal with a nonprofit tied to his wife late Friday night — after months of resisting calls from reporters to make the document public.
The California Department of Health Care Access and Information posted the $6.2 million agreement with Baby2Baby Friday, revealing the details of the taxpayer-funded contract.
The nonprofit — whose CEO sits on the board of a charity founded by Jennifer Siebel Newsom — was awarded the deal to provide 400 free diapers for every newborn delivered at participating California hospitals.
The department laid out in detail and defended its selection of Baby2Baby despite a request from ethics watchdogs demanding an audit of the process.
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“The Newsom administration has been misleading about whether the contract was awarded in a competitive process and has mired the entire situation with a complete lack of transparency,” said Kendra Arnold, executive director of Washington DC-based Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust.
In the Friday post, the department said Baby2Baby was selected because it demonstrated statewide distribution capacity, partnerships with more than 590 California organizations, procurement capacity and an ability to launch quickly a statewide hospital distribution network.
The department initiated a “request for information” proposal, got responses from 15 organizations, and ultimately selected Baby2Baby after an “evaluation process” used for all respondents.
Still, critics have said the deal reeks of political favoritism as the diaper nonprofit received a $12.5 million contract extension into next year. State records labeled the deal as “non-competitively bid,” CBS reported.
The first-year $6.2 million contract laid out the terms and scope of the deal. It also disclosed how exactly the money will be spent.
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More than half of the contract, at $3.89 million, goes to actually getting the diapers with “Golden State Start” branding. About $750,000 will be spent on shipping the diapers and $610,000 goes to warehousing them.
In total, the cost for each diaper amounts to up to 12.5 cents per diaper.
An additional $35,000 is spent on “communications,” while labor costs take up the rest at $917,000. There are 12 employees working the program, meaning salaries from the deal would average to a little more than $78,000 per person.
Republicans are continuing to criticize the deal. State Sen. Roger Niello argued that running the program through a nonprofit — instead of having the government or hospitals buying the diapers directly — is an odd strategy if the goal is to keep costs low.
”They’re going through a middleman, a nonprofit, and that’s going to have administrative expenses,” Niello said.
