ATLANTA  - State officials are investigating a string of contracts that were awarded by the Georgia Department of Public Health's HIV unit, according to a published report on Saturday.

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The internal investigation focuses on about $5 million in contracts issued to nonprofit firms that perform much of the HIV testing in Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The report said the health department's HIV office has been plagued for years with massive turnover and questionable management of federal funds.

HIV Prevention Program Director Leisha McKinley-Beach resigned last month as investigators probed the awarding of millions of dollars in federal funds during her 16-month tenure, the newspaper reported.

State Health Officer Brenda Fitzgerald told the newspaper she is conducting a top-down review of all the contracts that have been awarded by the unit. She said there appears to be a wide variation in the costs of the contracts, and that some of the contracts went to former state employees without competitive bids.

"I'm looking at every single part of that, because we have to do better in the state of Georgia," she told the newspaper.

Department spokesman Ryan Deal said Friday that Fitzgerald may ask Attorney General Sam Olens to open a criminal investigation.

Georgia receives about $8 million each year in HIV prevention funds from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About $5 million is doled out to nonprofit organizations in contracts ranging from $30,000 to $150,000.

Several of those contracts went to a nonprofit affiliated with two men who had recently left the state health department, according to the newspaper.

The Comprehensive Men's Health Initiative received three HIV prevention contracts during McKinley-Beach's tenure, the newspaper reported. Initiative chief executive Gregory Bolden is a former health department official who left his state job as the firm was awarded the money, and Jevon Gibson is another ex-state health official who is now a contractor for the nonprofit.

Gibson told the newspaper that he was approached to do the work because of the constant turnover of staff in the health department.

"The total institutional knowledge of the HIV unit was less than a year," he said.

Clare McGuire of the watchdog group Georgia Watch said competitive bidding for government contracts helps guarantee better use of taxpayer money. She said not doing so could foster an appearance of "impropriety or favoritism."

McKinley-Beach told The Associated Press on Saturday evening that the HIV unit does not have authority to execute contracts. "All contracts are executed by the commissioner of community health," she said.

She said state contract delays for years "contributed to the disease burden of HIV" because agencies couldn't fund prevention services. She added that she sought to partner with community agencies with a proven track record.

"During my short tenure, I worked long and hard to ensure that communities mostly impacted by HIV had the resources they needed to stop the spread of the epidemic," she said.

For years, McKinley-Beach said, state contract delays led to funds being returned to the federal government.

"Part of the goal was to assure that resources were available to ...implement HIV programs, to reduce the number of infections in the state of Georgia, not based on friendships but based on proven track records to deliver service," she said.

She said her departure "wasn't about the investigation. It was about the direction that the HIV prevention program would be forced to go."