ATLANTA — Georgia’s attorney general will not investigate a state contract that rolled out a billion-dollar program fraught with problems. A state audit found that the state skirted the law when it limited who could bid on it.
It was a program quickly launched weeks before Gov. Brian Kemp’s re-election. Democrats wanted the Republican attorney general to investigate it. Friday, his office said it would not.
"We received ours in the fall of 2022," said Cody Tran, then a Lilburn resident who says he and his mother got virtual cards bearing the name of Gov. Brian Kemp valued at $350. It was part of a program to distribute federal money at the tail end of the pandemic.
But Tran, who now works at the capitol for state Sen. Nan Orrock (D-Atlanta), said the family found them problematic when they first tried to use it at a grocery store.
"Tried it at online retailers, other grocery stores, other chains, even local chains and even restaurants. Nothing," said Tran, whose mother immigrated from Vietnam.
We heard similar stories from recipients in 2022.
Kemp announced the program just weeks before early voting started in his re-election campaign. A state audit released earlier this year said that state solicited contracts from hand-picked companies – even though state law required the state publish a request for proposals so anybody could bid on it. The state gave the contract to a company called Rellevate, which posted a thank-you photo afterward for the billion-dollar contract.
Kemp won re-election in November 2022.
"The state law requires that any contract for over a hundred thousand dollars must go through the mandated procurement process. This contract was ten thousand times bigger than that, and a contract was awarded in only seven days," said state Sen. Elena Parent (D-Atlanta).
Parent was among the Democrats calling for Attorney General Chris Carr to launch a criminal investigation. Carr and Kemp are political allies.
But Carr declined Friday, a spokeswoman saying the audit “doesn’t call for any criminal investigation.”
In the meantime, Tran said his family still hasn't been able to access the cash represented by the virtual cards distributed in 2022.
"$350 is a lot of money, especially if you're a low-income family -- that’s groceries for a month and a half," Tran said.