Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith said he’s “very concerned” and “shocked”
Santa Clara County is launching an investigation into a high-priced government history book it commissioned from the wife of a former South Bay politician after roughly one-fifth of the manuscript was found by this news organization to contain content copied from numerous online sources.
County Executive Jeff Smith said Thursday he was “shocked” and “very concerned” after this news organization sent him side-by-side comparisons of paragraphs in the manuscript and the original content from other sources. In an email response to this news organization, McCorquodale said the manuscript was just a draft and she didn’t intend for any of the sections in question to remain in the final work.
McCorquodale did not respond to a follow-up request asking her to share the version of the manuscript she referred to in which the sections in question had been removed or rewritten. During that period, she was awarded no-bid contracts by supervisors after the county executive’s office claimed she possessed “unique” credentials that made her a “distinctly valuable resource” when it came to her grant writing. The office also justified those contracts by saying her previous grant applications had brought in millions of dollars.SAN JOSE, CA – FEBRUARY 28: Santa Clara County Executive Dr. Jeff Smith speaks during a news conference in San Jose, Calif., on Friday, Feb. 28, 2020.
McCorquodale appeared to even have picked up materials from the county, including one paragraph from a Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation website about the Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum in San Jose, with four words changed.