Foley Ties to Oracle

Brian Fraley may be on to something. He predicts that the state's $29 million dollar no bid contract with Oracle will be the next big money deal to go under the microscope.

According to DOA Executive Assistant, Sean Dilweg, the Oracle contract was part of an effort to find efficiencies by consolidating state contracts. The administration negotiated a revised six-year maintenance contract that rolled all those contracts into one.

Fraley discusses the conspicuous timing of contributions from Oracle Executives to Jim Doyle's campaign immediately after the contract was singed on May 25, 2004. Oracle was recently awarded another state contract worth $10 million.

But I think there may be another wrinkle here.

For months, I've been hearing that Marc Marotta's law firm, Foley & Lardner, represented Oracle in contract negotiations with the state. The story is that Oracle dumped the firm it had previously employed for Governmental Affairs and hired Foley instead.

Because the Wisconsin Ethics Board does not require lobbyists to register when they are lobbying for state contracts, I have been unable to verify this information. I did however find a notice on Foley & Lardner's website advertising a legal seminar hosted by Foley and featuring a keynote address by Sanjay Prasad, Chief Patent Counsel of Oracle.

The seminar also included the Chief Counsel of Hewlett Packard's patent division. Remember when Marotta and his lackeys starred in Hewlett Packard's catalog?

Foley & Lardner members had contributed $166,540 to Jim Doyle's re-election as of the January 2006 report. I should hope they got more for their money than that puny $50,000 no bid contract with the Department of Commerce in November 2004. Afterall, Adelman Travel got a contract worth $750,000 in exchange for $20,000 in contributions.