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Friday, December 05, 2014
Another Ballard Employee Cashing In On Public Service
Department of Public Works Director Lori Miser will be rewarded for services rendered to one of the many consulting firms awarded no-bid contracts during Mayor Greg Ballard's two terms as Indianapolis mayor. Miser is joining HNTB Corp., which has made generous campaign contributions to Ballard's campaign committee, as associate vice president of planning. Miser previously worked for Parsons Brinkerhoff, as well as HNTB, before joining the Department of Public Works. She left the Department briefly to work for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization. Her husband works as a code inspector for the City of Carmel. The City of Indianapolis has one of the weakest ethics laws in the country, making it very easy for key city employees to curry favor with city contractors in exchange for six-figure employment opportunities immediately upon leaving their government employment. Campaign contributions from consulting firms like HNTB dwarf all other sources of the Mayor's campaign contributions due to the lack of any competitive bidding procedures for these no-bid contracts, which total in the tens of millions of dollars every year. Gross over-billing is commonplace, and nobody within government has an incentive to weed out the corruption..
Those campaign contributions don't cost the no-bid consultants a dime. Let you in on a secret. The bills are padded to recoup the cost of the campaign contributions, which often run between 5% and 10% of the total contract award, sometimes more. The joke is on the taxpayers.
ReplyDeleteIf the candidate has no degree in engineering, architecture or urban planning, what qualified her to become a VP of one of the nation's largest engineering firms?
ReplyDeleteAlmost all work engineering and architecture consultants receive from the public sector is via no-bid contracts. The process is ironically called "quality based selection". Take a look at the IBJ list of largest engineering firms in central Indiana and cross link it to the amount of contributions made by their executives.
In reading this blog and others like it I've come to understand the legal profession in central Indiana is no better - and likely worse. Anyone out there want to map out this web of cronies and the rivers of dirty money that flow to them? Maybe one day hatch out a plan to better finance campaigns of folks who will put the public's interests ahead of their own? Or find a way to reach and educate voters?