Did courts hide violations?

Figures obtained by the Deseret Morning News through a Government Records Access and Management Act request showed the AOC had purchased $96,332 worth of services under the contract. Those services were to create a computerized case file system for the juvenile courts.

In his letter, Packer said these are examples of what he claims are indications of larger problems at the AOC. Packer has asked for a legislative audit of the two contracts as well as others that have not been fully looked into.

A source within the Utah Attorney General's Office has said they are looking into AOC purchasing practices but are not calling it an investigation at this point.

Court officials admit mistakes were made but point out steps were taken to correct the errors through employee training to make sure they will not happen again.

AOC attorney Brent Johnson denies any insinuation of favoritism to any company.

"We're absolutely genuinely concerned about whatever mistakes were made," Johnson said, adding that the equipment and services purchased were needed by the courts. "There's no evidence that the state got a bad deal anyway."

Johnson said training has been provided for most AOC employees to make sure they are up to date on how to follow state purchasing policies, which are put in place to discourage favoritism toward specific companies. Johnson also points out that as soon as AOC was made aware it was using an expired contract, it put an immediate stop to it.

However, Johnson lays the blame for the confusion over the expired contract on the shoulders of the Division of Purchasing, which he said failed to advise them sooner of the change.

In a letter last August to Department of Administrative Services director D'Arcy Pignanelli, AOC administrative services director Gordon Bissegger wrote that two meetings were held in May 2004 among state IT directors to discuss the expired contract. "The courts IT director was not advised nor invited to the meetings," Bissegger noted.

"We certainly don't want to get into a blame game with another state agency," Richins said, but he added that all valid state contracts are posted on his division's Web site for AOC officials to compare.

"It sounds like there has been some finger-pointing," said Utah Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, who also chairs the Legislative Audit Committee. Valentine said it sounded to him as if AOC officials did not check on the status of the contracts, and that warrants closer inspection. Valentine said he was not aware of the conclusions reached by the court's internal audit.

"We've had some concerns in the past," Valentine said about AOC. "It appears there's some merit in looking into it again."