Morning Call filed request for documents as Pennsylvania panel prepared to track down news sources.

By Matt Birkbeck | Of The Morning Call

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board canceled an investigation of its own employees over suspected press leaks the same day The Morning Call formally asked about it.

On Jan. 12, the board requested bids from private investigators interested in determining whether any current or former employee had violated a nondisclosure agreement.

But the board canceled the offer Feb. 6, the day the newspaper asked under the state's expanded Right to Know law to see any document or contract related to the request.

The Morning Call and other media have used named and unnamed sources for gaming board stories over the past 18 months.

In May 2008, for instance, The Morning Call reported that state gaming regulators had ordered their investigators to change a background report on Mount Airy Casino Resort owner Louis DeNaples -- and gave DeNaples early access to challenge its findings -- before awarding him a slots license, according to sources.

In its Jan. 12 letter to five investigative firms, the gaming board sought price quotes for a probe to determine ''possible violations of PGCB employee Non-Disclosure Agreement'' by an ''Unknown number of current and/or former employees.''

The investigation was to last up to six months, according to the letter. The board sought quotes for personnel, including investigators, analysts and auditors, that routinely cost upwards of $200 per hour each.

Each employee of the gaming board, a regulatory agency that oversees Pennsylvania's slots industry, must sign a nondisclosure agreement barring him from talking about gaming board business.

Those contacted were ChoicePoint-Workplace Solutions of Phoenixville, Chester County; Gentile-Meinart & Associates of Monaca, Beaver County; Information Network Associates of Harrisburg; Spectrum Gaming Group of Northfield, N.J.; and Manuel, Daniels, Burke International of Alexandria, Va.

Each company had responded to a contract offer for investigations in 2006 and remained on a list of potential vendors.

After learning of the Jan. 12 letter, The Morning Call e-mailed gaming board spokesman Doug Harbach on Jan. 29 to ask for copies of all gaming board ''procurements'' from Dec. 1, 2008, to Jan. 29.

The only one, Harbach replied, was for a contract involving parking spaces in Pittsburgh. The newspaper subsequently filed a Right to Know request for all documents relating to the 2006 investigative contract.

The board sent the newspaper a copy of that contract, and the letters to the five firms. Four of the firms took part in a pre-quote conference with the gaming board on Jan. 23.

''We were waiting for the details of this assignment,'' said Louis Gentile, president of Gentile-Meinart & Associates, ''but they never came.''

The gaming board canceled the offer on Feb. 6, the day The Morning Call filed its Right to Know request and two days after Gov. Ed Rendell unveiled his 2009-10 budget proposal.

''The reduction recommended by the governor will render it impossible for the board to contract for these services at this time,'' Steve Wilson, the gaming board's director of office services, wrote to the five companies.