BY GREGORY A. HALL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
VILLA HILLS -- Two Kenton County commissioners are proposing a ban on secret sales pitches by prospective contractors in the wake of a two-year-old bidding controversy.
Commissioners Bernie Moorman and Steve Arlinghaus proposed Wednesday to tighten restrictions on collusion in the county's procurement code. The changes try to address the controversy surrounding awarding of courthouse and parking garage contracts to Corporex Cos. in 1996.
The commissioners' request comes a week before a grand jury is scheduled to see whether any state laws were broken in the bidding process, and two weeks before the two Democrats seek re-election. The changes would ban bidders from having "any improper or off-the-record contact" with any county official who helps decide what company will win the bid.
While commissioners said the change is aimed at preventing problems with future bidding, the ban on off-the-record contact would address the meeting between Corporex Chairman Bill Butler and then-Judge-executive Clyde Middleton that landed the county in the controversy.
Corporex and Mr. Butler said there was nothing improper about his meeting the night the bids were opened at the home of Mr. Middleton, where the developer was able to see competitors' bids and later copy them. Corporex and Mr. Butler said the bids were public records available to anyone.
In his Feb. 11 resignation speech, Mr. Middleton said, "I inadvertently and unintentionally did not comply with the Kenton County procurement code."
Unfair advantage
County officials contend that by having competitors' proposals, Mr. Butler was able to have an unfair advantage in revising his offering. Corporex has taken the position that even if the bids weren't public records, the county is responsible for making sure procedures are followed.
The request calls for County Attorney Garry Edmondson to draft amendments to the Kenton procurement code that would ban improper contact. The commissioners also call for any county employee or official who has improper contact with a bidder to make a written disclosure.
The proposal by Mr. Arlinghaus and Mr. Moorman also requests a penalty provision under which a bidder could be disqualified from the process, banned from doing business with the county or forfeit profits on the project.
Those penalties would be in addition to any criminal or civil liability already existing under state law. The county code has no penalty.
A grand jury requested by the Kentucky attorney general's office is to meet Oct. 28 to examine whether laws were broken in the bidding. Subpoenas issued to county officials have said that Mr. Middleton is the subject of the investigation.
All three county commissioners have been subpoenaed to testify. The commissioners' proposal comes days after settlement talks in a separate, civil lawsuit between Corporex and the county stalled. The county is suing Corporex and Mr. Butler to recoup an $850,000 settlement paid to the two losing bidders -- Wessels Construction and Development Corp. and Carroll Properties -- over the 1996 competition for construction contracts.
The county accuses Mr. Butler of manipulating the process to win the roughly $36 million projects.
Corporex and Mr. Butler deny any wrongdoing and place blame on the county for failing to follow its own rules. In particular, company attorneys say Deputy Judge-executive George Neack targeted the company. Mr. Neack has denied the allegations.
Mr. Edmondson said the changes are in line with state and national codes.
"It's what we've been working on for several months," he said. Mr. Edmondson was taking too long, necessitating the commissioners' proposal, Mr. Arlinghaus said. He said he doesn't want to give the public the impression that the commissioners aren't trying to fix the county's code.
"I don't want to see the next fiscal court stuck with this issue," Mr. Arlinghaus said.
Mr. Arlinghaus' Republican opponent, Adam Koenig, had a different take.
"It's amazing what an election can do for spurring on people like my opponent to actually get things done," Mr. Koenig said. "We just need to assure the citizens of Kenton County that we're going to put measures in place to try to keep bidders from having improper contact with the people responsible for the county's purchasing and contracting," Mr. Moorman said in a statement. "If the bidder makes improper contact, the bidder should be penalized, not the taxpayers."
Mr. Moorman's Republican opponent, Dan Humpert, said the changes are political grandstanding although the penalty provision is needed.
Mr. Humpert chastised the county for modifying its bidding procedures for the 1996 process. Under the method the county claims to have used, all bid information is to be kept private until a contract is reached with the winner.
County officials elected instead to have public presentations of the proposals and release base-bid prices on the projects while withholding more detailed information in the bids.
"What they're trying to do is make some political points out of something they themselves had approved and changed and got their hands burned as a result of changing it," Mr. Humpert said.
He also criticized Mr. Moorman for taking parts of the proposals to his bed and breakfast, where members of a book club Mr. Moorman wasn't a members of was using his facility for a meeting. Book-club members said they saw poster boards, but not the details of the proposals. Mr. Humpert said criticizing Mr. Middleton for showing the bid books to Mr. Butler is a double standard.
Information was to be proprietary, he said. "Then Bernie immediately takes them home and shows them to his buddies at his house, much like Clyde (Middleton) did."
Mr. Moorman said there is no comparison between the meeting at his home and the one at Mr. Middleton's.
"I am aghast that he would try to say such falsehoods in order to get points for it," Mr. Moorman said.
The county's settlement agreement with Wessels requires the county to review its procurement rules and amend then as needed "to prevent future abuse and manipulation of bidding or procurement procedures for Kenton County."
The settlement with Wessels called for the county to hire an independent accounting firm to analyze Corporex's actual costs in the bid project to determine what the company's profit was in the deal.
