Last year, the Capital Chronicle reported that Morales had given a spot bonus to nearly every employee in his office for a total of more than $308,000.
Included in the Indiana secretary of state’s new budget requests are hundreds of thousands of extra dollars for IT-related needs and expansions. But recent vendor contracts awarded by the agency show millions have already been quietly spent on those services, absent any competitive bidding to find the most cost-effective providers for the projects.
The contracts — provided to the Indiana Capital Chronicle upon request — are not visible in the state’s transparency portal, where agreements entered into by state agencies are typically housed and made public.
Agreements with one Indianapolis-based IT company, CleanSlate Technology Group, amounted to more than $2.3 million for services provided between March 2023 and July 2024.
Online “application support and development services” are also being contracted out to MTX Group, a Texas-based technology consulting firm. Since the 2025 fiscal year began on July 1, the …