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Posted on 07/21/2026 10:53:43 AM PDT by Bullish
No-bid contracts require justification to the Department of General Services and public posting
Gavin Newsom has a $6.2 million diaper problem. His administration awarded a no-bid contract to Baby2Baby, a nonprofit with longstanding ties to the Newsom administration. One of its co-CEOs, Norah Weinstein, also serves on the board of the California Partners Project, the nonprofit co-founded by First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
Then Newsom told Californians the deal had gone through “a competitive bidding process.” It had not. California’s own contracting database labels the $6.2 million deal “NON-COMPETITIVELY BID.” Newsom’s administration now says the governor was referring to the “competitive nature” of the process.
But the department’s own chief deputy director told state senators in May what the exemption really does. It “allows you to essentially engage in negotiated contracting outside of state rules,” she said, because the normal bidding process “can be cumbersome and time consuming.” Apparently Sacramento has discovered a new form of government procurement: a contract that was not competitively bid but was competitive enough for the governor to call it competitive bidding.
The state asked organizations interested in participating in the program for information. Fifteen responded. The administration says all 15 were evaluated under the same process and that Baby2Baby was selected because of its ability to procure, warehouse and distribute diapers statewide. But the Request for Information, or RFI, explicitly stated it was “Not a Solicitation.” Whatever the administration wants to call the process now, it was not competitive bidding.
California had specifically exempted the diaper program from normal competitive-bidding requirements. Existing diaper banks had been told there would be an opportunity to compete. Yet some organizations that responded reportedly were never interviewed, and some learned Baby2Baby had been selected when Newsom publicly announced the partnership. Having several organizations express interest does not magically turn a no-bid contract into a competitively bid contract.
This also was not Baby2Baby’s first no-bid trip to California’s treasury. In 2022, lawmakers directed $1 million to Baby2Baby for a car-seat program. The following year, another $1.5 million was directed to the nonprofit for diaper distribution in Los Angeles.
Baby2Baby may be perfectly qualified. It is a highly regarded charity with a large distribution network, and there is no evidence it has done anything improper. But if Baby2Baby was clearly the best organization for the job, why not let it compete and win? Instead, taxpayers are being asked to take the Newsom administration’s word for it.
This was not an accidental loophole buried somewhere in California’s sprawling bureaucracy. The exemption was written into the state budget, passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Newsom. The 893-page budget exempted the diaper initiative from competitive bidding, public advertising requirements and review or approval by the Department of General Services, the state agency responsible for overseeing government contracting. The resulting deal also avoided the normal public visibility associated with no-bid contracts.
Try finding one sentence in an 893-page budget. That’s not oversight. That’s playing Where’s Waldo with taxpayer money, and nobody in Sacramento wanted you to win.
California does allow no-bid contracts. But that path requires justification to the Department of General Services and public posting. It has been used 474 times since 2018. This deal skipped it entirely. Then CBS News started looking for how many other times Sacramento had done the same thing. That is when Diapergate stopped being just a story about diapers.
More than two dozen exemptions across seven state departments, covering more than $1 billion in appropriations. The exemptions waive competitive bidding and Department of General Services oversight. Roughly two-thirds have no expiration date. One exemption covers a $253 million opioid-response fund. Another gives California’s Office of Health Care Affordability, the state’s own health-cost watchdog, its own no-bid authority through 2031.
Let the lawyers decide if any laws were broken. I already know what this reeks of: ethical improprieties.
But competitive bidding and public oversight exist because taxpayers should not have to blindly trust politicians and bureaucrats to spend their money wisely. Without those rules, taxpayers have little way of knowing whether the state got the best deal or why one organization was chosen over another. Diapergate is not an isolated controversy. It has exposed a much larger Sacramento practice.
Newsom cannot shrug this off as some obscure decision made deep inside the state bureaucracy. He championed the diaper initiative, signed the budget containing the contracting exemption, and his administration selected Baby2Baby and publicly announced the partnership. When questions arose, Newsom personally assured Californians that the deal went through a competitive bidding process. It did not.
California’s political leadership has decided that programs involving more than $1 billion in taxpayer appropriations can operate outside normal competitive-bidding and contracting safeguards. Californians deserve to know why.
Before Newsom throws another stone at President Trump, he might want to check how many windows are left in his own glass house.
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Scamalis will have a field day collecting money for nothing
Off topic, but she’s so often referred to as the first partner.
Does it violate political correctness to call? I heard the first lady of California?
What are we saying? Does she maybe not even identify as a woman? Does it stigmatize the female spouse of a male governor to call her a first lady?
Leave the man and his family alone!
$6.2 million is chicken feed compared to what Pelosi took.
“Newsom’s Diaper Deal Stinks”. I wonder what Gavin’s hair gel smells like.
You can bet they are disposable Huggies. The freeloading illegal aliens won’t be washing shiddy cloth diapers like our mothers did. They’ll be wanting to fill the gringo landfills full of illegal alien crap.
I don't even know if they still make soft cotton diapers like our mothers provided, and which we gratefully tested.
LOL! We sure did.
What NGO got the Guv’s hair gel contract? Is there such a thing as an NGO that is not run by useless eater liberal women?
You can buy 192 Kirkland brand diapers for $18.62 at Costco. Let’s call it 10 cents/diaper. 40Million diapers x 10 cents = $4,000,000. She’s pocketing a cool $2.2million dollars out of the $6.2M contract.
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