Last Tuesday, the Council voted by a 6 to 1 margin to extend the McCormick emergency transportation and billing services contract for another year. McCormick received a ringing endorsement from Fire Chief Serna as data provided by the City showed they had met or exceeded contract expectations, including the critical response time requirement of 92% as reflected in the table below.
Councilman Milton Herring, the lone nay vote, expressed concerns about McCormick’s involvement in past campaign finance violations and said he wanted the City to undertake the Request for Proposal (RFP) process so they could evaluate other potential bidders.
Councilmembers Griffiths and Ashcraft joined Herring in expressing reservations about the contract, but ultimately approved the extension indicating their belief that there was insufficient time at this point to complete the RFP process. They also noted that they had recently voted to release a solicitation seeking other vendors for the service, but that such motion brought forward last April was not approved by their colleagues on the Council.
During her comments, Councilwoman Ashcraft stated:
“I have consistently voted against the City’s contract with McCormick Ambulance because of what I have perceived as a “pay to play” situation involving them during the election campaign of 2014 that got them the contract … It’s regrettable to me that McCormick thought they had to pay to play in order to get the contract, because I believe they would have gotten it other than that.”
Resident Linda Gottshall-Sayed, who previously served on the Ethics Commission with Mayor Furey, forcefully reminded the Council during the meeting that McCormick and the Mayor had broken the law and also urged the Council to seek additional vendors for the service in the future.
Prior to the vote, Mayor Furey acknowledged an e-mail received from former Councilwoman Maureen O’ Donnell wherein she wrote to the mayor, “Because of circumstances well known to you, please be honorable and recuse yourself from voting on the McCormick contract.”
With regard to the issue, Mayor Furey solicited advice from City Attorney John Fellows who responded by saying:
“There is no legal requirement for recusal here. To the extent that the request for recusal hinges upon campaign contributions generally speaking those are not considered an economic benefit to an elected official.”
Fellows made no comment on the unusual arrangement in which
McCormick paid Mayor Furey’s FPPC fine and whether that relationship arose to a conflict of interest requiring recusal. Fellows has also thus far declined to pursue any action against the Mayor for violations of municipal law revealed in the Fair Political Practices (FPPC) investigation.
Perhaps due to all the hoopla surrounding their involvement in the 2014 election, McCormick was much less visible in the recent 2016 election. Required post
election disclosures did reveal, however, three $1,000 contributions made to the campaign of Leilani Kimmel-D'Agostino from representatives of McCormick. These contributions were made in late June 2016 after the election had already concluded. D'Agostino was endorsed by Mayor Furey and the public employee unions, but ended up losing despite
outspending all of the other candidates.
The post election
financial disclosure also revealed another $14,846 payment to RFC Communications bringing the total paid to that firm to nearly $50,000. RFC appears to be the latest incarnation of Patrick Furey Jr’s political consulting firm due to it sharing a phone number, address, and client list with Furey Jr’s prior firm Liberty Campaign Solutions. Dagastino had hired Furey Jr. to work as her campaign manager, but tried to distance herself from him during the campaign by saying she only hired him to design some print material.
Clint Paulson
