After a slow start, Pennsylvania used the emergency procurement process to hire a consulting firm to help with the state's vaccine rollout.
Fred Adams / For Spotlight PA
After a slow start, Pennsylvania used the emergency procurement process to hire a consulting firm to help with the state's vaccine rollout.
Fred Adams / For Spotlight PA
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Spotlight PA’s tallying of Pennsylvania’s pandemic-related spending led us to the state’s emergency procurement program — a faster and, critics say, less transparent way for agencies to purchase urgently needed supplies and services.
Not unexpectedly, that spending ballooned in 2020, with state agencies requesting to spend $340 million, up from an annual average of $81 million.
Many requests were straightforward, like bulk orders of masks and gloves. Other requests led to scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, and some requests were downright curious — like one from PennDOT for repairs to a plane used for emergency response that collided with a deer.
The requests alone only tell part of the story. State agencies are not required to produce a written contract for emergency procurement requests. Departments under state law must post purchase orders related to those expenses to the Treasury Department website, though there is no mechanism in state law to ensure that happens.
Even with those documents in hand, it’s not always clear whether the work was completed, or how much a contractor was paid. Sometimes, the cost is higher or lower than the original estimate. In some cases reviewed by Spotlight PA, the purchase never happened at all.
These requests also don’t represent the totality of state agencies’ spending in recent months — grants and other procurement processes were also used.
But they do shed light on how the administration responded to the pandemic and what was prioritized. Here are the highlights of what we found via a public records request.
Most expensive pandemic-related requests:
Most expensive requests not related to pandemic response:
Other notable requests:
Agencies that made the most requests:
Agencies with the highest estimated costs for requests:
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