Walker approved $250,000 no-bidcontract to campaign donor, AP reports

Well, what do you know? The news media have reported that Scott Walker personally approved a $250,000 no-bid contract that went to a campaign donor.

He was all over a story about Gov. Jim Doyle's admministration awarding a contract to a travel agency whose officers had donated to Doyle, calling for Doyle to return the money, rebid the contract, and scourge himself in public with a whip.

This Milwaukee County contract can't be rebid, of course, because it was never bid in the first place. The firm in question did get another contract that went out for bids, though -- except that the "winning" firm (the Walker donors) ranked near the bottom of the pile. That one could be re-bid, and Walker could give back the money, for starters.

Cory Liebmann at Eye On Wisconsin broke the original story and has continued to ask questions and prod the media to report it. He rates a gold star on this effort.

Do you think it will be the top-line story in the Journal Sentinel, as the Doyle story was, or is McSykes right about there being a double standard?

Here's the AP story:

Records show Walker approved no-bid contract to campaign donor

RYAN NAKASHIMA
Associated Press

MILWAUKEE - Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, a potential gubernatorial rival who slammed Gov. Jim Doyle for taking campaign donations from a firm that won business from the state, himself approved a $250,000 no-bid county contract for a company run by campaign donors, records show.

Walker approved the contract to provide eight beds for mental health patients awarded in December 2004 to Bell Therapy, a subsidiary of Milwaukee-based Phoenix Care Systems Inc., a county official confirmed.

Campaign finance records show Phoenix executives donated $2,375 to the Friends of Scott Walker campaign from 2002 to 2005, including $1,475 in the year the company received the contract. Two donations were made Aug. 26, 2004, four months before the deal was awarded.

Walker told The Associated Press he did nothing wrong.

Phoenix CEO Leonard Dziubla said any connection between campaign donations and its contract was a "magic leap."

"It's a personal contribution and I believe in his philosophy," Dziubla said.

Walker, a Republican, hopes to unseat Democrat Doyle in next year's election, and has said he would "clean up state government." He has criticized a state contract worth an estimated $750,000 awarded to Adelman Travel in March after the company donated $10,000 to Doyle's campaign.

"There's absolutely no similarities between what happened with the Doyle administration and what happened in this particular case you're referencing," Walker said.

Walker said Bell Therapy was a long-standing mental health services provider that won an expanded contract, while Adelman was bidding for a new one. The county contract also was approved by the county board and recommended by a panel that included consumer advocates. The Adelman contract was approved only by the state administration.

"It's all stuff that goes before the county board. They have to approve that. There's a whole elaborate process that's set up. It's unlike the situation that they're talking about with Adelman Travel, where the administration approves that and there are no checks and balances," Walker said.

The nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a group that advocates campaign finance reform, said both deals were suspect.

"Whenever there is a decision made to suspend a competitive bidding process and the company that gets the work also happens to be a generous campaign donor, that does not pass the smell test," executive director Mike McCabe said.

Adelman Travel won a contract after a bidding process in which it did not rank the highest on a 1,200-point scale.

Bell Therapy won its no-bid deal after mental health care givers in the county determined beds were needed immediately to clear a backup in hospital emergency rooms, said James Hill, the administrator of the county's Behavioral Health Division.

"It made good policy sense and it made good treatment and clinical sense," Hill said.

Bell had provided eight crisis respite beds for mental health patients in the county since at least February 2001, when it also won a no-bid contract, he said. It made sense to award the company another contract because it had an available facility, he said.

After winning the deal in December, the facility was up and running by Feb. 1, Hill said.

A competitor, Health Care for the Homeless of Milwaukee Inc., said it may have been able to provide the same service in the same timeframe more cheaply, if it was allowed to bid.

"Certainly it sounds like something we could have provided and we would have most likely submitted a bid if we had a chance to," said its finance director, Brant Mursch. "If we can do it better and/or at a lower cost than another provider, it would make sense to have us do it."

Dziubla said in a statement Bell won the contract because it had offered similar services to the county for 20 years and "because of our long established record of providing quality programs, our history of successfully serving similar clients and ready availability of a facility."

In 2003, Walker signed into law an ethics rule that says no one seeking a contract from the county is allowed to make campaign donations to an official who has final authority during the contract's consideration.

In this case, final authority rested with Walker, but donations were made to his campaign a month before and six months after the prohibited period.

According to Hill, the consideration period began Sept. 20, the deadline for a response to the county's request for proposals. It ended when Walker signed off on the deal, some time after the full board approved it Dec. 16, he said. Walker usually signs contracts approved by the board within a week, he said.

After the Aug. 26, 2004, donations to Walker's campaign of $200 by Dziubla and $125 by Phoenix president Donald Fritz, Fritz contributed another $250 on June 30 this year, avoiding the prohibited time.