Eleventh Hour City Training Contract Called Legal with No Wrongdoing
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 6/17/08 @ 10:43 pm - Filed Under City Council, Featured
This was submitted as a guest post by Dan Jehl, coordinator for Fort Wayne Public1 and writer for Frost Illustrated. You should also take the time to read Kalb’s and Spaulding’s posts on what transpired.
It was called the “eleventh hour” contract and the “lame duck” contract. And it’s about tax dollars. Both the circumstances and timing surrounding this contract never did pass the public’s sniff test. And now, nearly six months later, it was in the sights of the public’s radar—the City Council-the very arena many claim it should have been brought months ago.
This contract is between the City of Fort Wayne and High Performance Government Network for $95,000 a year for three years to continue training of city employees and develop a strategic plan to save millions of dollars. The contract is essentially the same people who were previously doing the training as city staff. The contract was not sent to City Council for review.
The contract is with a firm loaded with former City Administration staff. And the contract was signed on the second to the last work day of the year and end of Mayor Graham Richards’s term, the day after the Purdue Bowl Game, and four days before Mayor Tom Henry’s inauguration.
Expectations ran high. All media were present with cameras set and ready for fireworks. Some expected Council Dems to toss the soft balls, and the Council Repubs to throw the curves. But it was the straight fastballs from both sides of the aisle that caused the City Officials the most trouble.
It was not the drama many expected. One hour and 8 minutes of questions produced only a few tense moments where the key actor Pat Roller paused and even nodded-but never an admission of wrongdoing or even that this could have been handled differently. Some questions were not questions but testimonials replete with accolades and kudos-from both parties.
The timing and aspects of this High Performance contract has been raising eyebrows and questions for several months. Fort Wayne Web Logs, most notably FWP, have served as a citizen forum for questions and commentary by many. With Councilman Glynn Hines absent, there were 5 Repubs and 3 Dems—numbers that favored anticipated tough questions, lame answers, and wrongdoing exposed. It didn’t happen!
The City Council and the Mayor’s Chief Counsels were present, but neither were called upon to speak. The contract legality issues were handled by Jim Howard with sound questions from Councilman Harper. Howard claimed the December 27 Contract with High Performance was “legal” since the ordinances define the year as a calendar year and the threshold was $100,000 for Council review and the contract was not over that in any one YEAR.
On the signing of the contract, Pat Roller, again responding to Councilman Harper, said that Joe Kimmel signed the contract for High Performance and that yes indeed he was in the employment of the City prior to that but did not work on the contract.
On the question of why was this done in the waning days of the Mayor Graham Richard Administration, Controller Roller repeatedly held her ground unwavering in admitting that it was her decision, that she was faced with an anticipated $14 million budget shortfall for 2009, that she has the fiscal responsibility to deal with it and seek to present a balanced budget for 2009, that the High Performance training had saved the city around $3 million annually, and that she believed that this could be done by contract so that the $3 million savings would continue year in and year out.
On whether Controller Roller consulted with Mayor-elect Tom Henry, Roller admitted that she did not talk to him about this. She accepted the accountability for entering into the contact again and said that she “knew” that Mayor-elect Henry wanted to continue Mayor Richard’s initiatives and this was one of them. She indicated that the new Mayor was “very involved” with the “transition” and she did not discuss it then with him.
This brought mixed reaction from the Council. Councilwoman Liz Brown expressed incredulity that a $14 million anticipated budget shortfall for 2009 and the chance to save about $3 million with the award-winning and dollar –saving training staff on the City staff all leaving and going to High Performance and now here’s a chance to contract with them. Brown questioned how a matter of this importance could not have been brought up with the incoming Mayor.
Councilman Tim Pape said we have learned here that this was “legal” and no wrongdoing. The most interesting of all the exchanges dealt with the process or handling of the contract. Councilwoman Karen Goldner asked why this wasn’t brought to the Council in January and indicated she would have supported it. This brought the standard reply from Controller Roller that the focus of the Administration was the transition and for her it was the upcoming budget deficits.
Goldner then said that she has no concerns over the content of the contract, and reminded the City Officials that: “This whole thing could have been avoided if it had been a little more out in the open.”
Councilman Tom Smith referred to the “best practices” taught in the High Performance training. Smith said: “I know about “best practices,” and this was not best practices. We heard it is legal; but it is not best practices; and it is unfortunate.”
And then the summation and closing argument from Council President Tom Didier to the three City officials: “I agree with Tom Smith. You should have taken the initiative. An aspect of this is we constantly deal with ethics all the time. This could have been avoided. And I am not saying there is any wrongdoing. “
Didier again: “I hope there is a lesson to be learned here…..In the future, I hope this comes forward.”
The City officials’ heads nodded, and they remained silent. They got the message. It was a home run by President Didier that ended it-not the anticipated fast balls and curves after all.
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5 Responses to “Eleventh Hour City Training Contract Called Legal with No Wrongdoing”
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I have a friend who interned at the street light department in the 7 to 9 years ago range. He had a buddy who interned at the sign department at that time. The normal procedure for the street light department was to sit around and drink coffee until 11 and then they’d go down to the Coney Dog and watch the “Price is Right”. Finally in the afternoon they’d get some work done because it was high visibility for them.
The same was apparently true at the sign department where they would get 2 signs taken care of when the total should have been twenty. An employee there would spend city time at a local strip club. He was told that he probably shouldn’t do that because it looks bad with the city vehicle being there and all.
I can remember as a teenager being harassed by a city employee simply walking down the street (to get a FW phone book). I guess I did have a goofy combination of clothes, a purple striped shirt and my hair sticking out but a city employee slowed down to my walking pace (no traffic) to say something of the effect of “check this guy out” to his buddy. And kept going on. I kept going on until I walked into the phone building and flipped him off before I walked in. He jammed on the brakes like he was going to come after me.
Obviously, if any of these “employees” worked for a real business they wouldn’t be working too long. But… if Graham Richard’s system has got the sign department up to 6 or 7 signs a day then, hell, maybe it’s worth it…
What about ethics? What strikes today is realizing that the “wrongdoing” was dissected by Council legally, procedurally, timing-wise (11th hour), failure to announce (hence perceived secrecy), lack of opportunity for oversight by Council, and lack of consult with new Mayor on this althogh both John Shoaff and Liz Brown incisively questioned whether that was really the case. But what about ethical wrongdoing?
Point of fact is the word “ethics” was mentioned only once-in summation by Tom Didier.
Harper, Brown, and Shoaff all did ask pointed questions on the ethical wrongdoing but didn’t seem to maka a dent. The City officials replied with characteristic Denial and not Remorse or even the hint of Admission that just maybe there are ethical and moral standards expected of those holding the public trust.
The specifics go like this. HPGN was formed about midyear in 2007. The city replied to Mitch Harper that they did not know when formed. Mitch did, and how could the City not know? One by one, the trainers left the city employment and went to HPGN.
This did not happen overnite like the Colts leaving Baltimore for Indianapolis. The city controller knew by early December she would be reappointed by Tom Henry. The attorney who signed the contract for HPGN on Dec. 27 had been employed by the City. Per Pat Roller, the attorney left in December which means he signed a 300K contract literally within weeks or days of leaving the city. This whole scenario afforded ample time to discuss with the Mayor elect and supposedly that did not happen??
The contract paid tax dollars to a contractor in a seamless time web with the only change being that the trainers are now contractors and not city employees. I hesitate to bring this up; but in Wisconsin, the Code of Ethics would PREVENT this from happening for ONE Year for State Contracts.
This is the ethical wrongdoing that is still out there and unresolved.
Even a budget crisis does not absolve public officials from ethics. It is not a free pass on ethics in the affairs of the state, in this case, the affairs of the City, its elected and non-elected representatives, and its citizens.
If this contract was such a good deal, then why not trust Mayor Henry and his advisers to take the appropriate action?
There wasn’t one good response from Roller about why it was rushed through at the last minute. So if Roller uses the budget shortfall as a justification, what stops Mayor Henry and others from rushing something through this year because the City will be in a budget crunch?
This was simply a railroaded job, legal as it may be, to ensure that the contract was granted.
I also agree the ordinance should be amended to look at the aggregate amount of contracts rather than a yearly amount.
It’s time to clean our City in Fort Wayne.
There are way to many self-serving paided interests on board in our fair city.
Term limits come to mind for City, County, State
and Executive advisor employees.
Here’s video of my friend telling me a little bit about it. I don’t often video record conversations… lol
http://www.vimeo.com/273407