Article: Unbid Contracts - or 'Sweetheart donations, a secret AG advisory, and welcome to Ohio!'
"This approval today is pretty much a cover-up," state Sen. Teresa Fedor, a Toledo Democrat, said after the vote. She serves as a nonvoting member of the School Facilities Commission.
The vote came after Petro’s office secretly advised the commission that state boards and commissions — including the School Facilities Commission and the Ohio Turnpike Commission — aren’t subject to the ban on political donors receiving unbid contracts.
(Comments: John Curry)
Agency votes to end ethics ‘loophole’
Ohio’s longstanding ban on granting lucrative state contracts to political donors does not apply to the state agency responsible for spending more than $4 billion to build schools, the attorney general’s office quietly told agency officials this week.
In an informal opinion, Attorney General Jim Petro’s office said the rule doesn’t apply to independent boards and commissions because they — and not Gov. Bob Taft or other statewide politicians — are responsible for awarding contracts, according to people who have reviewed the attorney general’s opinion.
The Ohio School Facilities Commission and Petro’s office both declined to release the written opinion yesterday, citing attorney-client privilege.
Acting to close a "loophole," the commission voted Thursday to prohibit unbid contracts of $500 or more from being awarded to companies whose owners have donated $1,000 or more to Taft in the two years preceding the contract.
While some officials hailed the decision as an important step in eliminating the perception of "pay to play" in state government, others questioned why an agency that spends $2 million a day has been exempt from ethics rules in place since the mid-1970s.
"This approval today is pretty much a cover-up," state Sen. Teresa Fedor, a Toledo Democrat, said after the vote. She serves as a nonvoting member of the School Facilities Commission.
The vote came after Petro’s office secretly advised the commission that state boards and commissions — including the School Facilities Commission and the Ohio Turnpike Commission — aren’t subject to the ban on political donors receiving unbid contracts.
The ban, which dates to 1974, prohibits companies from receiving unbid state contracts worth $500 or more if people owning 20 percent or more of the company or their spouses have donated $1,000 or more to the elected official who oversees the agency responsible for the contract.
The rule is intended to eliminate the practice of companies giving money to politicians in exchange for contracts.
Some companies have received contracts from the School Facilities Commission in recent years after their principals donated to Taft, although the practice doesn’t appear to be widespread. For example, a consortium of builders including Danis Building Construction Co. was awarded a $1.5 million contract to manage the building of Dayton schools in October 2003, even though Danis principals had donated $5,500 to Taft’s 2002 campaign, according to state records.
Taft spokesman Mark Rickel and Rick Savors, spokesman for the School Facilities Commission, said the commission has never directed contracts to political contributors.
"The policy that’s now in place has been our intention all along," Savors said. "We can’t unring the bell on anything that’s happened . . . but it’s not like there’s been a pandemic of problems out there."
Rickel said the commission vote places the agency under the same rules that govern the Ohio Department of Transportation and other agencies that report directly to the governor.
"The governor is doing this to preserve the public trust and also for consistency, to codify the same rules for the School Facilities Commission that apply to other agencies," Rickel said. "Right now, there’s an exemption in the law that the governor thinks should be closed."
The commission was dogged by ethical questions shortly after it was formed in 1997 to manage a program to replace Ohio’s aging schools with new facilities. The commission’s original executive director, Randall A. Fischer, stepped down in August 2002 amid revelations that he had accepted free golf outings, meals and other perks from companies that received millions of dollars in unbid contracts he unilaterally awarded. He later was convicted of two criminal ethics violations.
Unlike the Ohio Turnpike Commission, the School Facilities Commission does not require contractors to certify that they have not given $1,000 or more to the governor in the preceding two years. Rather, the standard contract requires contractors to affirm that they are in compliance with state ethics laws, but it does not spell out the contribution limit.
The Ohio Turnpike’s director of contract administration, Kathy Weiss, said the commission voluntarily follows the campaign-finance limit even though turnpike officials don’t consider themselves bound by the same laws as most state agencies.
posted by Kathie Bracy at 3:45 PM
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