Nine months after California canceled a scandal-dogged software contract with Oracle, state legislators met Tuesday to hear a bill that seeks to strengthen oversight of state information technology projects.

The measure, SB 791, was authored by Sen. Dean Florez, the legislator who led state legislative hearings last year into a $95 million no-bid Oracle contract. Under the contract, the state had agreed to license database software for more than 250,000 employees.

The hearings were prompted by a state audit report that estimated the contract would cost California $41 million, rather than save the state $100 million over six to 10 years, as Oracle contended.

Gov. Gray Davis and numerous state officials became embroiled in the Oracle contract probe when it was disclosed during the hearings that a Davis aide had accepted a $25,000 campaign contribution from the software maker just days after the state signed the ill-fated deal in 2001.

The bill, which has the support of the Davis administration, proposes the appointment of a state senate-confirmed chief information officer and the creation of an Information Technology Board to replace the now-defunct Department of Information Technology, whose head came under fire for his support of the Oracle contract.

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