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https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/06/05/investigation-ordered-after-text- from-wikipedia-other-sources-is-found-in-draft-of-costly-santa-clara- county-history-
book/?__vfz=medium%3Dstandalone_content_recirculation_with_ads

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.

Jean McCorquodale, wife of former county supervisor and state Sen. Dan McCorquodale, was awarded contracts without competitive bids over a 10-
year period that paid her at least $2.45 million to write grant
applications and to research and write a county government history book.
The book project, overseen by the county executive’s office, fell two
years behind schedule.

In the 580-page draft manuscript she submitted in January, entire
paragraphs appear to have been copied almost verbatim from Wikipedia, the History Channel, the Mercury News, the Washington Post, county web pages
and other sources, about half of them without footnotes.

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.

Smith said he is putting the project “on hold” and plans to hire a third-
party investigator to review the manuscript. He said he’s also consulting
with the county counsel, but did not elaborate.

“It’s troublesome,” Smith said, adding that he expected an original work.
If the book is eventually published, it may not be seen by many people
because it could end up only in the county government building at 70 W.
Hedding Street in San Jose and in the county archives.

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.

“The paragraphs you cited were highlighted in my working copy, and all
have long been removed or substantially rewritten, drawing from numerous sources and incorporated in the final bibliography. The paragraphs you
refer to and others were utilized as placeholders and were never intended
to be included in the final copy,” McCorquodale wrote.

But Smith said he hasn’t received any revisions to the manuscript
McCorquodale submitted and his office shared with this news organization.
“The copy that you have is the only copy I have,” he said. That copy does
not highlight placeholder paragraphs.

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.

This news organization discovered the copied material by running
McCorquodale’s manuscript through a plagiarism software called Scribbr,
then double-checked the original source the software identified against
her work.

The copied work appears consistently throughout the manuscript, and in
almost every instance McCorquodale’s version changed just a few words.
About half of the copied paragraphs had footnotes, but the University of California, Berkeley’s guide on avoiding plagiarism says even footnoted paragraphs should be paraphrased and not copied almost directly.

The revelations come in the wake of an investigation by this news
organization published May 29 that revealed McCorquodale has been paid at
least $2.45 million by Santa Clara County since 2009 for exclusive grant- writing work and the county history book project.

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.

After years of grant writing, she was tapped in 2018 to write “a
historical record that demonstrates the role of County government
throughout the years.” Smith previously acknowledged the book “took too
long” to write and he should have managed the project more closely.

In chapter five of McCorquodale’s manuscript, which covers early European settlement in the county, four out of 175 words from a section of the
Wikipedia page of politician and military leader Jonathan D. Stevenson
were changed. Chapter 20 contains an entire paragraph word-for-word from a History Channel article about the Spanish-American War’s Treaty of Paris.
In chapter 35, 17 out of 115 words from two paragraphs in a 2010 Mercury
News article about World War II’s influence on Silicon Valley were
changed.

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.

Other sources McCorquodale appeared to have copied material from include
the Encyclopedia Britannica, S.F. Geneaology, the California State
Association of Counties, the California Supreme Court Historical Society, SFGATE, the Atlantic Magazine, the National Park Service, San José State University’s Sourisseau Academy for State and Local History, the
California Department of Parks and Recreation, the Constitutional Rights Foundation and The Los Angeles Times, according to a review of the
manuscript.

McCorquodale has worked with the county since 1995, when her one-person McCorquodale Corporation was first given contracts to complete grant applications.

In 2009, the supervisors approved a no-bid contract to make her the
county’s sole grant writer. The contract lasted five years and was
ultimately worth $740,000.

In 2014, the county executive’s office asked the supervisors to renew McCorquodale’s contract again. The supervisors did so, and that contract swelled to $220,000 a year by 2016 and 2017. In 2018, the county
executive’s office tacked on the history book project, raising her
contract to $510,000 that year.
The following year, the supervisors approved an additional half million
dollars for McCorquodale because the county executive’s office said the
history book was taking longer than expected.

In previous statements, McCorquodale said the project had to be extended because it was “more difficult than anyone anticipated,” and the pandemic delayed her from accessing important historical documents. McCorquodale
also claims to have spent her own money on the book’s cover design, the
hiring of research assistants and other resources.



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