Saturday, September 4, 2004
Patricia Quattrocchi
H 908-789-9078
W 732-382-5505
County contracts should go to the lowest bidder not the highest
In the course of doing research on my current personal hero, US Attorney Christopher Christie, I stumbled upon a press release that peaked my interest. The release detailed how a Roselle Park woman, while in the employ of a service vendor to Union County, had embezzled more that $200,000 in HUD rent subsidiaries. Her employer, Rehabco of Union, had been designated, by the already nonpartisan freeholder board, as the county's agent to administer it's housing programs and disburse payments received from the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development known as the Section 8 housing program. Section 8 pays rent subsidies to landlords with qualifying low-income tenants. The woman pleaded guilty and received a 27-month jail sentence. HUD determined, after an extensive investigation, that the county failed to properly monitor the consultant and put the program in jeopardy. The county than found it self faced with a number of problems one of which was to repay the missing monies. Another was to get back in the good graces of HUD. Not only was the Rehabco employee stealing but also the vendor had neglected to file accurate reports, used reserve funds without proper HUD approval and incurred the wrath of landlords and tenants resulting in numerous complaints. What a mess!!
It should be noted that Rehabco Inc. was awarded its first contract with Union County without competitive bidding in March of 1999. At no cost to the county, Rehabco would administer a program and be paid based on a % of the dollar amount of the program administered. Their next contract came in December 1999 for $230,000 followed shortly by two contributions made by Rehabco to the UC Dem. Pac in May and June 2000 for $1,000 each. More no bid contracts followed, more contributions came and finally Rehabco made their last contribution in May 2001. To the credit of the county legal and accounting departments, who noticed that something was wrong, the Rehabco contract was terminated. Looks as if appropriate action was taken, however, what came next looks like blatant Pay-to-Play. That same month, another no bid contract was put together, this time with Developmental Directions LLC of Elizabeth. They were to administer certain HUD Section 8 services to the tune of about $80,000. On October 18, 2001 Developmental Directions LLC is listed on NJ Elec for a $2,500 contribution to the UC Dem Pac, and a couple of months later Freeholder resolution #180-2002 shows an amended contract total not to exceed, are you ready? $3,042,240. Imagine that. What is interesting is that Developmental Directions is now set through December of 2005, they were locked in, by another Freeholder resolution for an additional two year period, this appears to closely follow another $2,000 contribution.
As chronicled, this practice of awarding no bid contracts to the highest and not to the lowest bidder can be dangerous. To quote Forest Gump, "you never know what your gonna get". What Union County got was hit in the wallet. Not only do we have to reimburse HUD for improper spending, but the county had to hire an independent auditor for $50,000, pay for extra employee hours wasted on pouring over this stuff, spend money on additional legal fees to recoup the loss and garnered a tarnished reputation with not only HUD, but county landlords and residents as well.
The team of Joe Renna, Patricia Quattrocchi, Frank Arena and Bruce Paterson for Freeholder feel that this course of events is totally unacceptable. We need your votes so we can put Union County back on the right track. Help us to help you by learning more about issues that are import to UC. Please visit our website unioncountygop.org and feel free to Email us or call 908-789-0200.
