Back in the 1970s the Memorex company ran a commercial that featured legendary singer Ella Fitzgerald singing a note that cracked a wine glass.  Followed by the recording of her voice on Memorex audiotape also cracking a wine glass.

The tag line of the ad was: “Is it live, or is it Memorex?”

That advertising slogan came to mind in a slightly different way as we were reading the 03.04.13 Agenda Cover Memorandum from Fire Chief Mike Zywanski about the latest developments in the City’s spending of approximately $150,000 on 5 portable defibrillators to replace the current ones used by the Fire Dept.’s paramedics – even though it never followed the competitive bidding process contained in Section 2-9-9 of the City Code.

The tag line of this deal: “Is it fraud, or is it negligence?”

As we pointed out in our 02.18.13 post, “Competitive Bidding…Who Needs It?“, purchases of this type over $20,000 are supposed to go through a competitive bidding process to help ensure that no City official sells their influence over a procurement process using public funds..  But this one didn’t; and the more we looked into why it didn’t, the kinkier the deal looked to us.  And the two perpetrators of what appears to be this kinky deal are none other than Chief Z and Acting City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton.

We first became suspicious of this deal when Chief Z tried to push it past the Council in January, notwithstanding that the federal grant funding that was being counted on to cover a big chunk of the cost of the replacement units did not come through.  In arguing for immediate purchase notwithstanding the funding failure, Chief Z made it sound like the current devices were so undependable they were putting the health and safety of the City’s residents in jeopardy – until, under pointed questioning by Council Finance Chairman Ald. Dan Knight (5th), he admitted that the current devices were fully functional and posed no danger to Park Ridge residents.

Our suspicions became more pronounced when Chief Z represented (on the third page of his 02.06.13 Memorandum to Hamilton) that “[c]urrently, there are four major manufacturers of critical care Cardiac Monitors/Defibrillators for Paramedic Field-Use” and that the Fire Dept. staff engaged in “side-by-side” comparisons of the comparable equipment from those manufacturers before choosing the Zoll Medical Corporation unit as “the preferred unit” of the Department – based on “unit design, features, ease of use, unit weight, portability and training required to transition to the new unit” – but could not/would not produce a copy of the evaluation/testing report or notes requested by Knight.

Even more suspicious was Chief Z’s failure, in that Memorandum, even to identify any of the other brands that were tested as part of the “evaluation,” or to provide any benchmark specifications for the replacement units and each brand’s scores measured against those specs. 

But it wasn’t until we saw Chief Z’s 02.14.13 Memorandum to Hamilton in which Chief Z stated that since August of 2009 there have been only 2 “major competitors in the market” (Zoll and Medtronic), with newcomer Philips Medical “just introducing…a new product in the marketplace,” that this deal began to actually smell.

How could Chief Z and his staff have tested/evaluated the equipment from two or three other manufacturers besides Zoll if there was only one other competing manufacturer?  

Interestingly, it looks from his 03.04.13 Agenda Cover Memorandum like Chief Z tried to end-run the competitive bidding requirement by utilizing the “Government Purchasing Cooperative” exception to purchase the Zoll units.  But that after-the-fact attempt at back-filling failed because the best price from the co-op for the Zoll units was $25,000 more than the quote he got directly from Zoll.

We’ve questioned Chief Z’s integrity and judgment since he sat mute at The Horseshoe in May 2011 while Mayor Dave Schmidt demanded to know who locked the City into a set of negotiating “ground rules” which , among other things, required that the negotiations between the City and the firefighters union be conducted in secrecy, and placed a “gag” on City officials to prevent them even from talking publicly about the offers and counteroffers until after an agreement in principle had been achieved.

Only two weeks later, after then-city mgr. Jim Hock was given an opportunity to look into how those “ground rules” came about, did Chief Z finally come clean and admit that not only did he bind the City to those “ground rules,” but that he actually proposed them!

Whether Chief Z’s (and Acting City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton’s) blatant disregard for the City’s bidding requirements for such a significant contract is an attempt at outright procurement fraud or just boneheaded negligence remains to be seen.  But that question will only be answered if the City Council stands up for the taxpayers and holds up this deal until Chief Z and Hamilton come clean – this time not about Chief Z’s kinky labor negotiations procedure but about why this procurement deal seems to be cooked to favor Zoll.

If the Council doesn’t do that job, the aldermen will be ignoring the competitive bidding process of the City Code.  And they will be selling out the taxpayers that they have taken an oath to serve and protect.

Worse yet, they will be acting more and more like typical Illinois politicians.

UPDATED (03.06.13): At Monday night’s Council meeting – beginning at 00:35:00 of the meeting video and ending at 00:51:12 – was the Public Safety portion of the meeting dealing with the continuing sage of Chief Z’s blatant disregard of the City’s competitive bidding rules in an attempt to get the City to spend $150,000 on new monitors/defibrillators for its paramedics from one particular source: Zoll.  And, once again, this deal looked so kinked up that the Council voted 6-0 (Ald. Marty Maloney absent) to send it back to the Public Safety Committee.

Why?

Because Chief Z admitted that he had nothing to do with the “subjective and opinion-based evaluation” performed by other Fire Dept. staff members back in 2009.  According to Chief Z, back then there were four manufacturers from which to choose, but Monday night Chief Z said he thought there were only three manufacturers today…until, under questioning from Mayor Schmidt, he acknowledged that there could be still other manufacturers who have come into the monitor/defibrillator marketplace since 2009.   And apparently no Fire Dept. employees did any research into the performance records or reports of those competing 2009-vintage machines since…wait for it…2009.

The more Chief Z tap dances around this deal, the dumber and/or kinkier it looks and sounds – and that even goes for Chief Z’s admission, under more Schmidt questioning, that a 3-month or more deferral of this equipment purchase until a real evaluation can be conducted will not endanger the public in any way.  That’s quite a bit different from the panic he was understatedly peddling just a month or so ago.

So while this misbegotten purchase has been properly delayed yet again, we continue to wonder why oh why nobody – not Schmidt, not ACM Shawn Hamilton, and not any aldermen – aren’t discussing the City’s competitive bidding requirement and how this particular purchase can possibly be exempt from it.  Maybe somebody around The Horseshoe will eventually wake up and ask that question of Chief Z and ACM Hamilton.  And with a little luck, they may even have an answer.

What’s the Vegas line on that?

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