But the real salt in the wound is in seeing the procurement officer and staff, who bumbled the award, go off free as a lark, to perpetuate their lackadaisical behavior without any as much as a strong word being placed in their personnel file.
Atlanta, Georgia, did not go down that road.
4 Atlanta watershed workers fired, manager quits over procurement violations
After firing four workers Friday, Peter Aman, Atlanta’s usually calm and mild-mannered chief operating officer, had a stern message for thousands of city employees:
“Don’t [mess] with the procurement procedures of the city of Atlanta. We are serious about people following the city code.”
Immediately after finding out that key members of the Department of Watershed Management’s security division circumvented rules to purchase $2.1 million worth of equipment, Aman fired them.
Aman said the workers wrote 160 invoices to Siemens Building Technologies for security equipment like cameras and access control pads for watershed facilities. The problem was that all of the invoices were for less than $20,000, which requires less rigorous approval standards from department managers, Aman said.
“So this was not an accident,” Aman said. “This was a clear subdivision of invoices.”
“They thought they were doing the right thing, but clearly they were contravening a standing city policy.”
“They would contend they saved months, and it probably was faster,” Aman said of the workers skipping procedures. “But when all is said and done, they didn’t comply to the code.”
“Whatever the rationale was, it doesn’t make a difference,” said Rob Hunter, the commissioner of the watershed department. “With the severity of the penalty, people will get the message that if you do this, you lose your job.”
Aman and Hunter said, there is no evidence that any money was stolen or that there was a criminal relationship with the vendor.
“All of the equipment was installed and it seemed consistent with the master security plan,” Aman said. “This was just a group eager to move forward more rapidly.”
While there has not been any criminal evidence yet, Hunter was unclear what kind of pressure the workers might have been under.
The watershed department is operating under a federal consent decree, which has put in place a series of ladders that the city has to meet before a 2014 deadline. The city is trying to get that extended to 2029.
The workers were ex-military and may have been eager to comply with Homeland Security rules to secure the city’s water supply, officials said.
“I don’t think they felt external pressure to do anything quickly. These were very experienced security professionals,” Hunter said. “The pressure they would have felt was the pressure of identifying a need and wanting to meet that need. But you don’t solve the problem this way.”
COMMENTARY: I am impressed. It must be made very clear that the procurement rules are there to serve ulterior purposes than simple expeditious performance.
It may seem draconian at times, but when people put themselves above the law, whatever the goal, they tend over time to ignore it altogether.
As I have said before, there is no place for the "no harm, no foul" notion in effective procurement regimes.
SUPPLEMENT TO ORIGINAL POST: Following a link to one of the hits to this post led me to some background on Atlanta's commitment to effective procurement. Atlanta has a very proactive Board of Ethics, and it is very public about what it is that the Board does, publishing both quarterly newsletters, such as this current one, as well as periodic annual or other reports, such as this 5 year review in 2009. In addition it publishes its Ethics Opinions online.
I would consider that to be an excellent benchmark for other jurisdictions to emulate.
No comments:
Post a Comment