A recent Dan Walters article noted a bill floating around (sponsored by a consultant's group) that would exempt engineers and similar consultants from California's public conflict of interest law. Interesting that it appears around the time that CAHSR looks to be entering its final days as a prime example of that.

California's conflict of interest law has been around, in some form, since the early days of the state, and a number of state employees have been fined or even gone to jail for violating it. Almost all were at low-mid levels, not top management, but still, it's there. Apparently, a couple of contractors over the years have run afoul of it, too. Something like CAHSR, where there really was no competent state staff running things for much of its existence, by design, so the contractors essentially ran the show, would seem to be fertile ground for conflict of interest violations. Even if agency and corporate lawyers worked overtime to control things, the appearance of graft and corruption is just too strong; things smell too bad for it to be just incompetence.