Harper Speaks About Overuse Of Consultants During IT Contract Discussion
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 8/20/08 @ 12:53 am - Filed Under City Council
There’s been quite a bit of chatter here about local government’s overuse of consultants. Councilman Mitch Harper identified a provision of the IT contract that will require a consultant and used the opportunity to discuss the issue in more general terms:
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Could you post this item seperately for discussion:
Glynn Hines is a Job for America Graduates teacher at Harding High School. His position is paid for funds from a federal grant, and from what I know he works for the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. If this correction, from my understanding he is in violation of the Hatch Act. Does anyone has further information to support this claim?
Soo, we shouldn’t use consultants unless they are local businesses in support of an IT contract? Then “line up those consultants” the more the merrier. Harper’s fairly consistent there, I see, as he tacitly supports Tim Pape—NOT. Just more hypocritical nonsense for political purposes. Does anyone have further information to support this claim? Tutor, maybe you can help me on this one? ACS is a piece of crap corporation. Hope their stock plummets to 2 cents a share. Good ol boy ACS support is crap and folks need to start reading through it.
Tutor,
James Mitchell, spokesman for the office of special counsel, has posted at FWP before regarding the Hatch Act.
I’ll pass along the same website he sent me which answered the question I had. Feel free to check it out and let me you know what you find…
Okay, I’m going to take Tutor’s off-topic comment and go even further off-topic. Jeff, I know that you disagreed with Bender’s position on City Council because of his role with FWPD, but I thought that was just on principle. I really have never heard of this law before.
From what I’ve read, Bender is almost certainly in violation of it. Unless he has another source of income that is greater than his FWPD salary or that he commits mor time to, than it is pretty obvious that he is prohibited from holding the office.
Do you know if anyone has ever filed an official inquiry into this? If it is truely as straight-forward as it appears, then I can’t imagine why Kevin Knuth, or some other major local Democrat, has never investigated this.
Phil,
If Bender’s duties (even partially) were connected with a federally funded program or grant then he would be prohibited from running for city council. I have no idea whether or not that is the case.
Maybe you should ask Andy Downs.
My God, does anybody ever sleep?
I actually went to the OSC website to try and understand it better. At first, I thought they were saying that the prohibitions were only against those employees who actually dealt with obtaining the grant funds for their agency, but upon further reading I don’t think that is the case.
I am not totally clear on whether the agency using federal funds is enough to prohibit all employees from politicking, or just those who specifically deal with duties which are paid for by such funds. Regardless, given Bender’s high rank, it seems hard to imagine that he doesn’t fall under this.
I pulled up the OSC complaint form and found it was pretty long. How the hell am I supposed to know Bender and Chief York’s home phone numbers and e-mail addresses? How am I supposed to know whether either of them knows if Bender is in violation of the Hatch act?
Anyway, I decided to fill out the form just to find out the answers to my questions. When I was done and preparing to send it, I realized it was not that easy. I had to save the form and now I need to go back somewhere else on their site and register with them to be allowed to send them the complaint form electronically. Even though I gave them all my personal information on the complaint form itself, I guess this is just a necessary barrier to ensure that no body files a frivolous lawsuit.
It sure would be easier if Downs or Knuth would chime in and answer this question before I have to invest more time than it’s really worth.
Another interesting point is that the Hatch act prohibits “being a candidate for office”. It does not specifically address whether actually “holding political office” is prohibited. So even if his candidacy was a violation,if no one filed a complaint last year does that mean he can continue holding office until 2011? And it it is only the campaign, rather than holding office, which is prohibited, could such a person be appointed rather than elected?
Phil,
I seriously doubt that Kevin or Andy knows any more about the Hatch Act then you do at this point. And I certainly don’t mean any disrespect to those two individuals but it’s just not something one comes across on a regular basis.
You should just go ahead and file the paperwork if you’re so inclined…
[...] a previous post I put up the video of councilman Mitch Harper’s comments during the IT contract debate. Harper pointed out that the contract requires the city to hire a [...]