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Sunday, August 05, 2007

Ind. Decisions - Yet more on: Impact of Fort Wayne Disability Center ruling in other areas of state?

"No-bid contracts split council: New Albany debates 2 agreements' validity" is the headline to a story today by Dick Kaukas in the Louisville Courier-Journal. Some quotes:

Members of the New Albany City Council will be asked tomorrow to authorize litigation to determine if a $3.3 million, no-bid contract awarded by the sewer board and another for $507,000 awarded by the storm water board are valid.

Both contracts went to Environmental Management Corp., the company that has operated the New Albany sewers since 2001.

The issue of whether bids should have been sought for the contracts has split the council.

Three members, Jeff Gahan, Dan Coffey and Bill Schmidt, met as a council committee considering no-bid contracts Friday afternoon, and all indicated they think bids should have been sought for both agreements.

Jerry Ulrich, the council's attorney, told the three that his review of state statutes has led him to that same conclusion.

If a resolution authorizing a lawsuit to determine the validity of the contracts is adopted at tomorrow night's council meeting, Ulrich said he would file a request for a judicial determination in Floyd Circuit Court. * * *

[Council member Larry] Kochert said he believes it's well established that contracts for professional services do not have to be bid. He described the council members who are opposing the agreement with EMC as "misinformed."

Several people with knowledge of contract practices around the state said yesterday that agreements for services apparently are exempt from bidding requirements.

David Bottorff, executive director of the Association of Indiana Counties, said that was his understanding.

So did Charles Pride, office supervisor for the Indiana State Board of Accounts.

But Pride added that the details of an agreement would be crucial in determining if bidding was required. And he pointed out that one section of state law requires "requests for proposals" for some management agreements.

Rick Fox, Floyd County attorney, also said he believes professional-services contracts are exempt from bidding. The question, he said, would be whether a particular agreement could accurately be described as covering only such services.

There is no mention in the story of the July 16th Indiana COA decision in Anita Stuller, et al v. Mitchell Daniels, Jr., et al, involving the now-closed Fort Wayne Disability Center (see initial ILB entry here, July 17th entry here, July 20th entry here) , but the ruling surely must be part of the discussion, as it has been in two recent stories out of Bloomington re a contract with a private company to take over operation of three public garages (see ILB entries from 8/1/07 and 8/2/07), as well as a story out of Fort Wayne involving a contract to have a private company manage the city-owned baseball stadium (see 7/20/07 ILB entry here).

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 5, 2007 05:54 PM
Posted to Indiana Decisions