Helping Contractors Rather Than the Public
One thing jumped out at me from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/science/earth/04pipeline.html" target="”_blank”">an
article on the front page of the New York <i>Times</i> today</a> that
deals with a common government ethics situation. The situation
involves a lobbyist hired because he had a close personal and
professional relationship with the head of a department that had to
approve his client's project.<br>
<br>
The ordinary issue here is that, while the lobbyist should certainly
not have been allowed to lobby the head of the department, should he
have been allowed to lobby officials and employees who would
naturally want to make the department head happy?<br>
<br>
The issue that jumped out, however, involved a deal that appears to
have been made. There is serious environmental opposition to one
aspect of the project. Therefore, that aspect was changed to lessen
the opposition and make it easier to get the project approved. This
is a good and common compromise.<br>
<br>
But it appears not to have been a compromise at all, but a deal that
would provide a way around the department's oversight. E-mail
messages show that the department suggested the lobbyist's client
may "reapply for the exception once the project had been cleared."<br>
<br>
Offering this deal does two things. One, it changes the department's
role from protecting the
public from damaging aspects of the project to facilitating the company's approval. Two, it removes the
department from its oversight role, because extensions are approved
by another agency. And the decisions of this obscure agency are not as open to public
scrutiny.<br>
<br>
The project discussed in this article involves the federal government, but this sort of thing
happens at the local level, as well. The typical situation is a
contractor who wins a bid with the agreement or understanding that
it will be allowed to apply for changes to the specifications or to the
amount paid. In such a case, the bid is effectively meaningless. It is worse than a no-bid contract, because it appears to have been competitively bid. As with the federal situation, the
attention paid to the bid process will not be paid to the apparently
obscure changes in specifications or the provision of additional funds
outside the bid process.<br>
<br>
As with the federal situation, the local situation involves favoring a company while giving up the government's oversight responsibilities and failing to provide transparency.<br>
<br>
Rarely do we see the communications between the contractor and
government officials. But if we did, we would likely see an odd sort
of conflict, where the official abandons her oversight role (protecting the public) in favor of representing the contractor by facilitating the contractor's bid and finding ways to allow the
contractor to make a low bid without actually having to do the work
for that amount of money. This may occur because the contractor has
special relationships with someone high up, or an ongoing
relationship with the official herself ("a trusted contractor I'm comfortable working with"), or is based in town while
the other bidders are from out of town.<br>
<br>
There are many reasons why a
contractor or someone seeking a permit may be given preferential
treatment, but none of them is adequate. If they were good reasons,
they would be made public, and the official would explain to the
public why she was suggesting a post-bid deal that would effectively
change the bid without allowing other bidders to participate, causing taxpayers to either pay more or get less for their money.<br>
<br>
This is why it is important to prevent this sort of communication,
and to require that any communication that does occur be written
down and disclosed to the public.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
203-859-1959