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Newsom's office called our diaper contract reporting "demonstrably false." State records show what happened

By
Julie Watts
Julie Watts
CBS California Investigative Correspondent
Julie Watts is a national-award-winning investigative correspondent for CBS News California. Based in California's State Capitol, Julie's reporting combines watchdog journalism with solutions-focused storytelling to expose systemic failures, hold the powerful accountable, spur legislative reforms, increase transparency and drive change.
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Julie Watts

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On July 17, six hours after we published our investigation into the state's no-bid Baby2Baby diaper contract, California posted the records we had been requesting for 66 days. That was at 5:34 p.m.

Thirty minutes later, an email from the governor's office arrived, "reaching out to clarify misrepresentations and factual inaccuracies regarding the Golden State Start initiative." It requested corrections and called parts of our reporting "demonstrably false." The office's statements are quoted in full below.

We take correction requests seriously. So we went back through every claim in the email and checked it against the record. That includes the governor's own budget documents, the Legislature's bill texts and analyses, the Legislative Analyst's Office, and the records the state itself released.

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Where the record supported additional details, we updated the story and said so. Where the office's claims don't match the record, we're showing our work below.

We asked the governor's office for a response before our story was published. They didn't respond until after.

Issue 1: The headline: "Newsom's 'competitive bid' diaper deal wasn't"

Governor's Office Claim: "This is an inaccurate representation of the RFI process. The process was still competitive, receiving 15 applicants who were judged on multiple factors including diaper cost, cost for implementation, existing infrastructure for manufacturing/distributing, and other significant considerations. The Governor was referring to the process being competitive in nature, which remains accurate."

The governor said, on camera, that the deal "went through a competitive bidding process." The state's own contract database codes the deal "NON-COMPETITIVELY BID." The document that governed the process says it is "Not a Solicitation" and that pricing "will not be considered a proposal/bid."

"Competitive bidding" is a defined legal process in California. State law requires competitive bids for state contracts, and the rules are specific: evaluation criteria must be published and advertised, proposals are scored against them, and losing bidders are notified with the right to protest. The state's contracting manual devotes an entire chapter to how it works. State rules also allow a handful of legal exemptions, which require justification and are publicly posted. None of that happened here.

The budget exemption made skipping it legal, which was the point of the story. This deal was exempted from the required competitive bid process.

The office's response concedes the governor was not using "bidding" in its formal sense when he said this.

As for the "15 applicants" "judged on multiple factors": the newly released records contain no scoring sheets, no evaluation criteria, and no rankings. The closest documents include a side-by-side chart with cells that read "Not answered" and a "Finalists Recommendation" report in which it says the agency "met with all RFI respondents…" At least one tells us they never got a meeting.

Also, the state's documents give conflicting counts of 11, 14, and 15.

We've asked the state to clarify and produce the scoring records. If they exist, we'll report what they show.

Issue 2: "For two months, the administration delayed providing those records"

Governor's Office Claim: "The administration has not delayed providing records in an effort to conceal documents as implied by your coverage. The work required to satisfactorily produce the PRAs per your request required extensions to grant our legal team adequate time to process and work on these requests."

CBS California reported a timeline. Not a motive. The request was filed May 12. California law requires agencies to "promptly notify" requesters whether records are disclosable, within a maximum of 10 days plus a 14-day extension in "unusual circumstances." The state took 24 days just to determine whether the records were public and disclosable. 

The state extended its own deadlines three times. Each time, the state waited until the end of the last day of the extension to send notice of the next extension. The most recent notice came at 5:09 p.m. on July 3, a state holiday, which indicates the email was pre-scheduled and could have been sent earlier.

The records were finally produced July 17, 66 days after the request, 70 days after the governor publicly announced the contract, and hours after our latest story was published. The office's email confirms extensions were required. "Delayed" is an accurate description of that timeline.

Issue 3: Key finding: "NON-COMPETITIVELY BID"

Governor's Office Claim: "Again, the process was competitive in nature. The 'non-competitively bid' refers to the RFI, which is labeled 'non-competitive' because of an exemption to provide flexibility to deliver on the project at the scale needed to serve Californians. The Governor did not use the term 'bidding' in its formal technical sense, but in the sense that we received a variety of proposals to review."

The story quoted the state's database coding verbatim, and later included HCAI's explanation of it.

We sent an email on July 13 asking to publicly use the office's "on background" description of what the governor meant by the term "competitive." The office did not respond.

The office's assertion that the deal is "labeled 'non-competitive' because of an exemption" confirms the finding rather than contradicting it.

Issue 4: Key finding: "The 2025 budget funded the free diaper program at the expense of traditional diaper bank funding"

Governor's Office Claim: "This reporting is demonstrably false – diaper banks and the diaper program initiative received the same funding in the final 2025 budget:

  • Diaper Access Initiative—$7.4 million General Fund in 2025-26.
  • Diaper Bank Funding—An increase of $7.4 million one-time General Fund for diaper banks.

Diaper banks received more funding in this year's final budget (2026/2027), exceeding the funding provided to the diaper access initiative:

  • Diaper Access initiative: $12.5 million General Fund in 2026-27 for the Department of Health Care Access and Information to contract for the provision of diapers at no cost to California families with newborn babies via hospital systems to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes.
  • Diaper Bank—An increase of $16.5 million one-time General Fund for various organizations to provide diaper and wipe distributions to low-income families with infants or toddlers."

We did report all of those details. However, the governor's office is specifically referring to a "Key Finding" bullet point at the top of the article, which abbreviated a more fulsome explanation further down in the story.

We updated the bullet to clarify that it was specifically Governor Newsom's 2025 Budget that funded his $7.4 million Diaper Access program at the expense of traditional diaper bank funding. The bullet now reads:

THE DIAPER BANK FUNDING TIMELINE

2025 

It was ultimately the Legislature that stepped in to fund diaper banks, initially at the expense of Newsom's program. 

2025 

As the Governor's Office notes, and we reported, the Legislature increased diaper bank funding to $16.5 million in the recently passed 2026 budget. 

2026 

As the Governor's Office notes, and we highlighted in our reporting, the Legislature's allocation for diaper banks now exceeds Baby2Baby's $12.5 million 2026 funding.

For completeness: on July 18 we published a clarification adding the Legislature's restoration to the Key Findings bullet. The body of the story has reported the restoration and the 2026 increase since first publication.

Issue 5: "The administration told lawmakers that diaper banks would be able to competitively bid"

Governor's Office Claim: "The link included in the article goes to a subcommittee hearing earlier in the budget process before the budget was finalized, which is disingenuous to the reality of the final 2025 budget."

That link supports the sentence that sits under it. On May 20, 2025, six days after the governor's May revised budget continued to defund diaper banks, the administration told lawmakers the diaper banks would be able to bid through an RFP process. That was five days after the window had closed for diaper banks to respond to the state's RFI. The state never issued an official RFP request for competitive bids.

The administration's email doesn't dispute any of that.

Issue 6: "The one the state won't release"

Governor's Office Claim: "This reporting is disingenuous considering the fact that we anticipate you to receive the PRA today. The state is releasing the contract, and in an effort of greater transparency, this contract will be published on HCAI's website."

The sentence was accurate when the story was published. The records were released at 5:34 p.m. on July 17, six hours after we published our latest story and 66 days after our request. The office's email anticipating same-day production arrived exactly 30 minutes after the records did.

We updated the story with links to the contract.

Issue 7: The subheadline: "Diaper banks lost their funding and were promised a shot"

Governor's Office Claim: "Again, the framing of this is blatantly misleading. As you note in your reporting, diaper banks received more funding this year than last year. Yet you choose to lead with a subheadline that misleads the public into thinking the administration cut funding to diaper banks, when in reality the Governor signed a budget proposal expanding their funding. We request an update to the framing/subheadline so that it accurately reflects the state of funding approved by the Governor to support diaper banks."

The subheadline says the diaper banks lost their funding and were promised a shot. The record in Claim 4 shows both:

  • The diaper banks' funding was expiring.
  • The governor's proposals in consecutive years contained none.
  • The administration told lawmakers the banks could bid.
  • No bid occurred.
  • The Legislature, not the governor's budget, restored a reduced amount in 2025 and increased it in 2026.

The office's email confirms the banks got more this year than last. That is exactly what our story reports beneath that subheadline.

Issue 8: "Lawmakers wrote Baby2Baby's name directly into the budget"

Governor's Office Claim: "This was a $1.5 million legislative augmentation in the 2023 Budget for Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services to work with Baby2Baby for diaper production and distribution – not the administration's add. This fact is not clear in your reporting. Please update to reflect that this originated from the Legislature – not the administration."

Our story already attributes both earlier no-bid deals to lawmakers, saying they "wrote Baby2Baby's name directly into the budget" and did it again the next year. Notably, the governor signed both budgets.

What we updated

  • Updated the story after the state released the contract and RFI respondent records six hours after publication. The update notes the release timeline, links the contract, notes Amazon's response, and reports HCAI's "Finalists Recommendation" claim that it "met with all RFI respondents or organizations representing RFI respondents," alongside a respondent's account that it never got a meeting.
  • Added the governor's office post-publication statement to the story's "Non-competitively bid" section, and updated the records timeline throughout. The story's references to a pending release were accurate when published and were overtaken by the July 17 release, 66 days after our request and 70 days after the governor announced the contract.
  • Clarified the Key Findings bullet on diaper bank funding, described in Issue 4. The original did not say whose budget defunded the diaper banks. The updated bullet attributes the 2025 cut to the governor's budget, the restoration to the Legislature, and the later re-funding of the governor's program to the Budget Bill Jr.

The questions the Governor's Office didn't answer

The email asked us for corrections. It did not answer the questions we've put to the state, so we'll repeat them here and have added a few more:

  • HCAI's own follow-up questions to Baby2Baby acknowledged that 300-400 diapers at discharge "might be overwhelming" and that limiting sizes could "waste product." Why does the executed contract nonetheless limit the program to two sizes, distributed at discharge, with "no right to return or exchange diapers"?
  • Was Amazon Business's September 2025 response evaluated? It appears in none of HCAI's comparison or finalist documents.
  • The governor's January 2025 budget proposal set the plan before the RFI ever went out: 40 million diapers, roughly $6.2 million for the vendor, and $500,000 reserved to explore a Phase 2 low-cost diaper marketplace. The executed Baby2Baby contract matches that plan almost line for line, down to the $3.8 million manufacturing estimate. So what in the process could have produced a different outcome — and why did the state pick the partner its own recommendation says "would not enable" consumers to buy low-cost diapers in the marketplace it budgeted half a million dollars to explore? Who made the final decision?
  • Records show HCAI told Baby2Baby it was selected on January 7, 2026. That was four months before the May 8 announcement. Were unsuccessful respondents notified at any point before the public announcement? If so, when and how?
  • Please produce the evaluation criteria and scoring records for the "judging" your email describes. None appear in the production, despite the state's stated intent to release "bid scoring sheets."
  • Please reconcile the respondent count: HCAI's Executive Summary says 11 responses; its Finalists Recommendation says 14; your email and HCAI's press release say 15.
  • HCAI says it "met with all RFI respondents or organizations representing RFI respondents." At least one respondent tells us they never got a meeting. Can you please identify who you met with from each organization?
  • The executed contract's Std 213 face sheet shows the DGS exemption citation struck through and replaced with the Budget Act citation, in a notation reading "RZ 5-20-2026," eight days after our records request. The original citation, Health and Safety Code §127692(b), is a provision of the Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act. Who made that change, in what capacity, and was the executed agreement formally amended? Why did the executed contract cite the drug statute? What legal authority governed the agreement on the date it was executed?
  • Baby2Baby declined to name its diaper manufacturer during the RFI process, and records show HCAI was still asking in August. Who manufactures the program's diapers, and did the state confirm the manufacturer before signing?
  • The 2025 budget provided $7.4 million; the executed contract totals $6.2 million. HCAI testified the $7.4 million will also 'cover a couple of years of Phase two.' Please provide the breakdown of the roughly $1.2 million not covered by the contract.
  • The RFI told respondents 400 diapers is "approximately a 3-month supply." Usage data submitted in response to the state's RFI indicates newborns require roughly double that in the first three months. Does the state stand by the three-month characterization?
  • It's our understanding that Baby2Baby was awarded the full two-year contract. However, the contract you've provided, signed in April of this year, only includes the first year — $6.2 million. Will Baby2Baby be awarded year two, or will there be a separate competitive bid process? 

We've asked the administration to answer on the record. We'll report what they say, or what they don't.

We continue to review the records and will publish an update soon.

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