How long before the state's looking for a new IT head?

Charley wonders if the Romney administration's new investigation of the travels of IT Division Director Peter Quinn has anything to do with a desire to coddle up to Microsoft - which opposes Quinn's proposal for an open document format not supported by Microsoft Word. At issue are several trips he made to, gasp, conferences on open-source software in business and government. The Globe's report, which shows a pretty significant lack of understanding of how high-tech trade shows work, states:

... Even though a galaxy of computer companies are listed as sponsors of many of the conferences, Quinn did not list any of them on his authorization forms or the business relationships any of them have with the Commonwealth. ...

The horror! In fact, trade shows are typically organized by a trade-show companies (IDG, where I work for one subsidiary, has another subsidiary that exists to put on trade shows) or trade associations - which then solicit "sponsors." Basically, they're the same as advertisers in, oh, the Globe, rather than primary organizers of the events.

One of the shows cited by The Globe is the 2004 annual conference of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, which was sponsored in part by Microsoft and where Quinn spoke on a panel with Stuart McKee, National Technology Officer, U.S. Public Sector, Microsoft Corporation. If the show was co-sponsored by Microsoft, does that mean Quinn might be biased in favor of Microsoft? If so, why did he propose something antithetical to the company? Makes the head spin.