California cancels PR contract for moth spraying

California officials on Monday said they have canceled a no-bid contract to promote the safety of aerial spraying for an invasive moth, acting after The Associated Press reported on the deal last week.

E-mails obtained by the AP revealed that a senior state contracting official questioned the arrangement with a prominent public relations firm that has ties to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The official said it was difficult to justify a public affairs campaign related to moth spraying as an emergency. Classifying it as an emergency allowed the contract to be exempted from normal contracting rules that are designed to limit favoritism.

On Monday, Schwarzenegger press secretary Aaron McLear said the contract had been terminated.

He also said the state would not seek a contract with another outside firm to do the work.

The $497,000 contract was awarded in November to Porter Novelli, an international public relations firm with an office in the state capital.

After hundreds of residents complained about breathing problems and other health effects from the spraying, the California Department of Food and Agriculture invoked emergency powers to award the contract without competition.

Porter Novelli is affiliated with Donna Lucas, former chief of staff to first lady Maria Shriver and a member of Schwarzenegger's inner circle during his first years in office.

The firm subcontracted work to Jeff Randle, a frequent campaign and political adviser to Schwarzenegger.

They are global warming propagandists, too.
Weird combo— the Peace Corps and Richard Nixon.
Was Nixon as much of a trojan horse as Arnie?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_Novelli

History

According to the firm’s website, “Porter Novelli International was created in 1996 by two international public relations leaders, Bob Druckenmiller and Peter Hehir, who had a vision of the first, true multinational, multicultural public relations firm capable of delivering best-in-class service to clients in all major world markets.” [1]

Druckenmiller “had co-founded Porter Novelli in the U.S. in the 1970s,” while Hehir “had founded Countrywide Communications Group in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.” The two joined forces “in the late 1980s to offer global service to both companies’ major clients,” the website states. [2]

In a listing on its website of PR companies with a crisis management capability, the American Meat Institute described Porter Novelli’s U.S. expertise as including “product recalls, tampering, environmental and natural disasters, regulatory and legislative issues, labor and factory incidents as well attacks [sic] from advocacy groups at the national as well as the local level.” [3]

“Porter Novelli is a national, full-service communications firm of over 500 professionals with offices in Washington, New York, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and Miami. Porter Novelli is the flagship agency of Porter Novelli International, with offices in 81 cities and 40 countries,” the AMI website continued. [4]

The New York Times reported that Porter Novelli (PNI’s “flagship agency”) “was founded in 1972 by William D. Novelli and Jack Porter, advertising men who worked together to market the Peace Corps and to get President Richard M. Nixon re-elected.” [5]

Climate change

Porter Novelli helped promote the U.S. Business Roundtable’s “Climate RESOLVE” program, O’Dwyer’s PR Daily reports. Climate RESOLVE was created to encourage companies to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, responding to George W. Bush’s call for a voluntary 18 percent reduction of emissions by 2012 and attempting to undermine an international treaty on GHG.

The Climate RESOLVE campaign kicked off on September 23, 2004 with ads in the Washington Post and Roll Call to be followed by “one-pagers” for “Congressional aides, environmental officials and reporters to keep them abreast of efforts to control greenhouse gas.”

Climate RESOLVE is also hosting a two-day “GHG Management Workshop,” featuring a talk by White House Council on Environmental Quality chair James L. Connaughton. The Business Roundtable says 70 percent of its members have signed up for Climate RESOLVE. “They are eager to avoid the mandated cuts that are going into effect in much of the world under the Kyoto Protocol, the pending international treaty of global warming,” O’Dwyer’s writes. [6]

U.S. government PR contracts

According to the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform Minority Office, Porter-Novelli received the following amounts per year, for federal PR contracts: [7]

$1,080,000 in 1997
$3,833,000 in 1998
$16,098,000 in 1999
$5,416,000 in 2000
$3,576,000 in 2001
$14,786,313 in 2002
$7,495,188 in 2003
$7,019,145 in 2004

Porter-Novelli’s federal contracts have included work for the Department of Health and Human Services, for their National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, carrying out an “annual mail survey … that examines health-related attitudes and behaviors.”

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