Santa Clara County is launching an investigation right into a high-priced authorities historical past guide it commissioned from the spouse of a former South Bay politician after roughly one-fifth of the manuscript was discovered by this information group to comprise content material copied from quite a few on-line sources.
Jean McCorquodale, spouse of former county supervisor and state Sen. Dan McCorquodale, was awarded contracts with out aggressive bids over a 10-year interval that paid her not less than $2.45 million to put in writing grant purposes and to analysis and write a county authorities historical past guide. The guide venture, overseen by the county government’s workplace, fell two years delayed.
Within the 580-page draft manuscript she submitted in January, total paragraphs seem to have been copied nearly verbatim from Wikipedia, the Historical past Channel, the Mercury Information, the Washington Submit, county internet pages and different sources, about half of them with out footnotes.
County Govt Jeff Smith mentioned Thursday he was “shocked” and “very involved” after this information group despatched him side-by-side comparisons of paragraphs within the manuscript and the unique content material from different sources.
Smith mentioned he's placing the venture “on maintain” and plans to rent a third-party investigator to overview the manuscript. He mentioned he’s additionally consulting with the county counsel, however didn't elaborate.
“It’s troublesome,” Smith mentioned, including that he anticipated an authentic work. If the guide is finally printed, it might not be seen by many individuals as a result of it might find yourself solely within the county authorities constructing at 70 W. Hedding Avenue in San Jose and within the county archives.
In an electronic mail response to this information group, McCorquodale mentioned the manuscript was only a draft and he or she didn’t intend for any of the sections in query to stay within the closing work.
“The paragraphs you cited have been highlighted in my working copy, and all have lengthy been eliminated or considerably rewritten, drawing from quite a few sources and included within the closing bibliography. The paragraphs you seek advice from and others have been utilized as placeholders and have been by no means meant to be included within the closing copy,” McCorquodale wrote.
However Smith mentioned he hasn’t acquired any revisions to the manuscript McCorquodale submitted and his workplace shared with this information group. “The copy that you've got is the one copy I've,” he mentioned. That replicate doesn't spotlight placeholder paragraphs.
McCorquodale didn't reply to a follow-up request asking her to share the model of the manuscript she referred to during which the sections in query had been eliminated or rewritten.
This information group found the copied materials by working McCorquodale’s manuscript by way of a plagiarism software program referred to as Scribbr, then double-checked the unique supply the software program recognized in opposition to her work.
The copied work seems persistently all through the manuscript, and in nearly each occasion McCorquodale’s model modified only a few phrases. About half of the copied paragraphs had footnotes, however the College of California, Berkeley’s information on avoiding plagiarism says even footnoted paragraphs ought to be paraphrased and never copied nearly immediately.
The revelations come within the wake of an investigation by this information group printed Might 29 that exposed McCorquodale has been paid not less than $2.45 million by Santa Clara County since 2009 for unique grant-writing work and the county historical past guide venture.
Throughout that interval, she was awarded no-bid contracts by supervisors after the county government’s workplace claimed she possessed “distinctive” credentials that made her a “distinctly precious useful resource” when it got here to her grant writing. The workplace additionally justified these contracts by saying her earlier grant purposes had introduced in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
After years of grant writing, she was tapped in 2018 to put in writing “a historic report that demonstrates the function of County authorities all through the years.” Smith beforehand acknowledged the guide “took too lengthy” to put in writing and he ought to have managed the venture extra carefully.
In chapter 5 of McCorquodale’s manuscript, which covers early European settlement within the county, 4 out of 175 phrases from a piece of the Wikipedia web page of politician and navy chief Jonathan D. Stevenson have been modified. Chapter 20 incorporates a complete paragraph word-for-word from a Historical past Channel article in regards to the Spanish-American Battle’s Treaty of Paris. In chapter 35, 17 out of 115 phrases from two paragraphs in a 2010 Mercury Information article about World Battle II’s affect on Silicon Valley have been modified.
McCorquodale appeared to even have picked up supplies from the county, together with one paragraph from a Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation web site in regards to the Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum in San Jose, with 4 phrases modified.
Different sources McCorquodale appeared to have copied materials from embrace the Encyclopedia Britannica, S.F. Geneaology, the California State Affiliation of Counties, the California Supreme Courtroom Historic Society, SFGATE, the Atlantic Journal, the Nationwide Park Service, San José State College’s Sourisseau Academy for State and Native Historical past, the California Division of Parks and Recreation, the Constitutional Rights Basis and The Los Angeles Instances, based on a overview of the manuscript.
McCorquodale has labored with the county since 1995, when her one-person McCorquodale Company was first given contracts to finish grant purposes.
In 2009, the supervisors permitted a no-bid contract to make her the county’s sole grant author. The contract lasted 5 years and was in the end price $740,000.
In 2014, the county government’s workplace requested the supervisors to resume McCorquodale’s contract once more. The supervisors did so, and that contract swelled to $220,000 a yr by 2016 and 2017. In 2018, the county government’s workplace tacked on the historical past guide venture, elevating her contract to $510,000 that yr.
The next yr, the supervisors permitted a further half million dollars for McCorquodale as a result of the county government’s workplace mentioned the historical past guide was taking longer than anticipated.
In earlier statements, McCorquodale mentioned the venture needed to be prolonged as a result of it was “tougher than anybody anticipated,” and the pandemic delayed her from accessing essential historic paperwork. McCorquodale additionally claims to have spent her personal cash on the guide’s cowl design, the hiring of analysis assistants and different sources.