You down with PPP? Yeah, you know me.
You down with PPP? Yeah, you know me.
You down with PPP? Yeah, you know me.
Who's down with PPP? Every last homie.
Not the homies on Northampton County Council. Last night, by an 8-0 vote (with one abstention), they made very clear that they've had it with the Northampton County General Purpose Authority (GPA). They want no more PPP (public private partnership), or P3 agreements, coming from the GPA. They want all marketing to stop. They want the GPA to end their relationship with GPA Solicitor John Lushis and his firm, Norris, Mclaughlin and Marcus. They also want GPA Shawn Langen to resign. They stopped just short of seeking a criminal investigation.
This resolution is the result of a meeting called by Finance Chair Ron Heckman on Wednesday. I have already provided a detailed account. An exasperated Ken Kraft said several times that the way GPA Solicitor John Lushis was paid by former County Executive John Brown amounted to a misappropriation of County funds.
Yesterday, before Northampton County Council met, GPA board members Peg Ferraro and J.Michael Dowd resigned, signalling their own displeasure at the way things have been going. They both have worked hard to develop reputations for integrity and fairness, and Executive Lamont McClure made clear last night that he holds them both in high regard.
Since she just resigned from the GPA, Ferraro thought it was appropriate to steer clear of this resolution, and abstained.
Yesterday's resignations mean that McClure may have won his battle with the GPA, and without firing a shot. He has just appointed Paul Anthony and Frank Pintabone, and he will soon be naming two more members. Ferraro must be replaced by a fellow Council member. McClure can appoint himself to replace Dowd. Historically, the county executive has chaired the GPA, and resigns when his term is up.
Since the GPA is made up of seven members, and McClure will have named four of them, he appears to be on the cusp of reining in this runaway horse.
During Council meetings, usually only summaries or excerpts of resolutions and ordinances are read. But last night, Council President Ken Kraft felt it was important to read the entire resolution. What particularly bothered Ron Heckman is not the money wasted by former Executive Brown, but the end run around the Administrative Code. "This is a big deal," he said several times.
The resolution, authored by Kraft and perhaps Heckman, is a powerful indictment of abuse of authority. I have copied it for you.
WHEREAS, by Ordinance No. 605-2016, enacted on March 3, 2016, Northampton County Council approved a public private partnership project (P3) to repair or replace 33 bridges located within Northampton County; and
WHEREAS, at no time has Northampton County Council approved a public private partnership project (P3) for any other purpose; and
WHEREAS, at a June 20, 2018 meeting of Northampton County Council attended by representatives of the Northampton County General Purpose Authority (GPA), County Council learned the following:
thought it was
· Former Executive John A. Brown told the GPA, in February 2017, that he'd like to use P3 for another 66 bridges, a new jail or adaptive reuse of the existing jail, a warehouse, forensic center, purchase of the Human Services building and a new parking facility. He made this representation without informing Northampton County Council.
· Former Executive Brown decided to employ John Lushis, Esq., who already was Solicitor for the GPA to research legal issues, draft legislation, meet with municipal officials and lobby state legislators to sponsor and enact enabling legislation.
· John Lushis, Esq. and his law firm, Norris Mclaughlin and Marcus, submitted $153,343.50 in invoices for “special legal services” in 2016 and 2017.
· These bills were funneled in contravention of the Home Rule Charter and Administrative Code through the GPA to former County Executive Brown, Department of Fiscal Affairs, Department of Public Works and Department of Community and Economic Development in order to keep both County Council and the Controller unaware of what was happening.
· The funds to make these payments were drawn from a $500,000 fund approved by Northampton County Council as line item 93010, which was to be used to update a jail study performed by former Executive John Stoffa.
· Former Executive Brown's authority to hire a special solicitor is set forth in the County's Administrative Code. The only professional service agreements exempted from the Code are those negotiated by the Courts or Human Services. § 13.01e. Professional services defined as "services requiring specialized knowledge, skill and expertise ... ." § 13.02. Procurement authority is vested in the County Executive, subject to approval by Council. § 13.03. All county services, including professional services, must be obtained by one of several forms of competitive negotiation. § 13.07a. Services in excess of $25,000 requires a written contract. § 13.16a. These contracts must be filed in the Procurement Department. § 13.16a. If they exceed $100,000, Council approval is needed. § 13.16c. Contracts for professional services must require that there be a final report provided directly to County Council. § 13.16f.
· These requirements were ignored. There was no competitive negotiation. There is no written contract, and nothing is on file in the Procurement Division. Though former County Executive Brown paid over $100,000, he never sought County Council's approval. No final report was filed. This procedure was done specifically to keep the governing body, County Council, uninformed about plans to use a P3 to build a jail and market it to other municipalities.
· Section 13.21 of the Administrative Code provides, "No elected or appointed official or employee of the County shall intentionally or knowingly circumvent the provisions of this Article. Further, that any such elected or appointed official or employee of the County of Northampton who shall intentionally and/or knowingly violate this Article shall be subject to surcharge to the extent of the damage shown to be thereby sustained by the County of Northampton, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon a conviction thereof, shall be sentenced to imprisonment of not more than one year or pay a fine of not more than $1,000, or both. Any contract entered into in violation of the within article shall not be binding upon the County of Northampton."
· GPA Solicitor John Lushis and former County Executive John Brown have continued to market P3 projects to other entities, both public and private, for their own personal gain and without regard to the best interests of Northampton County
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS RESOLVED AS FOLLOWS:
1) Northampton County Council hereby requests the General Purpose Authority to terminate the services of John Lushis, Esq. and Norris, McLaughlin and Marcus as Solicitor to that body.
2) Northampton County Council hereby requests that GPA Chair Shawn Langen resign from the GPA and expresses their appreciation to him for many years of dedicated service.
3) Northampton County Council hereby requests that the GPA not attempt in any fashion to market P3 to any other entities.
Was there really an "end run", or was that an exaggeration?
ReplyDeleteI think they should let someone from the State AG office determine if laws were broken.
ReplyDeleteWOW!!!
ReplyDelete12:25, it was an end run. There is no written contract. The bills would come in to the GPA. THEY WOULD APPROVE THE OTHER BILLS FOR PAYMENT, AND PASS THESE ALONG. BROWN WOULD THEN APPROVE PAYMENT AND THE MATTER WOULD GO TO FISCAL, WHICH WOULD CUT A CHECK from money set aside in the budget for a prison study. From there, the matter would go to public works, DCED and then GPA. That’s an end run.
ReplyDeleteIt’s time for an independent investigation.
ReplyDeleteThank you for covering this, Bernie. The mainstream media has been MIA on this issue.
ReplyDeleteBernie your plan for the weekend should be =OPP
ReplyDeleteYea right! He can’t get OPP, he can’t even get his own PP!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that slime ball Cathy Allen was involved in some way perhaps too.
ReplyDeleteHooray, Hooray, Hooray. McClure is cleaning up the County mess that Brown created. Hats off to McClure. The real credit for all of this goes to you Bernie. Great job. Council is letting Peg Ferraro and Mike Dowd off the hook. They were negligent in their representation on this Authority. You have a job to do when you commit yourself to be the people's voice on a board or authority and they didn't do their job. Thank goodness they are gone. This issue shouldn't be one of , now they're gone and we can get on with business. Lucious lushis and langen must go. The board should be disbanded and reorganized as a County Authority and not a State Authority. And then, If Council is so sure that they violated County laws, then they should look into litigation. This is no different than what happened in Allentown with Pawlowski
ReplyDeleteSo, is there still an outstanding bill for 813,000? I thought McClure was refusing to pay some attorney fees?
ReplyDeleteLushis and his law firm received $813,000 for GPA-related work in 2016 and 2017, even when it was not GPA-related at all. Brown authorized these payments. Unfortunately for Langen, he waited until the end of 2017 to try to get paid, and Brown had basically left the office. This fell into McClure's hands, and he refuses to pay. He also refuses to pay any bill submitted by Langen or Lushis in 2018 .
ReplyDeleteThis all could have been prevented with a competent Controller's office.
ReplyDeletePer the Home Rule Charter, the controller is responsible for ensuring there are adequate internal controls in place in the county. It's the first thing listed under the Controller section of the HRC.
That the office doesn't review each check going out to make sure that there is proper authorization is a dereliction of duty. The review of checks by an independent Controller's office is the missing final step in an adequate internal control over disbursements.
Fiscal can continue to cut the checks, but the Controller's office should handle the final mailing and be matching the checks to the proper approvals (including Council's) and also ensuring that the budget line items are proper and not exceeded. If everything isn't present, the checks don't go out. That's Controller 101.
There doesn't need to be an amendment to the HRC to correct this either. The authority is already in there.
There wasn't an end-around - just poorly designed internal controls that allowed this to happen. The Controller was aware of the process and either didn't recognize a basic weakness or didn't deem it important enough to fix. We are witnessing the result.
It needs to be addressed immediately before something similar happens again. If the Controller still refuses to address it, Council needs to step in.
If there’s a contact Mc Clure will be paying. Where’s your buddy Barron in all this? Dropping the ball?
ReplyDeleteBernie, do you think this came about as a result of information from the meeting the other day? Was county council on top of this and if so why didn't they do this last year?
ReplyDeletePocketbook Peg never saw a taxpayers dollar she did not like to spend...
ReplyDeleteAs McClown slept at the County Council meetings all this went on...
ReplyDeleteYeah, where was Barron in all of this? That clown is now gorging even more in the public trough, but under his watch the GPA raided the piggy bank. And Von Footinmouth is now Director of Fiscal Affairs? Lord have mercy!
ReplyDeletePolitical witch-hunt???
ReplyDelete"As McClown slept at the County Council meetings all this went on..."
ReplyDeleteActually, McClure was not a member of Council when the P3 bridge project was approved. You are posting disinformation, a typical Trump tactic that is now making its way to the local level. The P3 bridge project was approved by a NorCo Council that consisted of 7 Republicans. The sole Novote was from Kraft. In fairness to those who supported it, ut did propose an innovative way to fix our crumbling infrastructure at a low cost. The Rs on Council had no idea that Brown would select bridges that are perfectly fine. They had no idea until the end of 2017 that Brown had engaged Lushis as a secret Solicitor or that he was meeting officials in Upper Nazareth or that he planned to expand P3.
Given the Brown/Allen record and their four years with the county is this even a surprise?
ReplyDelete"Yeah, where was Barron in all of this? That clown is now gorging even more in the public trough, but under his watch the GPA raided the piggy bank. And Von Footinmouth is now Director of Fiscal Affairs? Lord have mercy!"
ReplyDeleteHe was doing his job. Barron found himself locked out of the system more than once bc he was asking too many questions, and assholes like Mat Benol and Seth Vaughn would criticize him publicly for doing his job. His job was auditing. Under our Home Rule Charter, the Controller has no role in approving payments because he then would be unable to audit them. But he was in fiscal nearly every day until Brown essentially banned him unless he was seeking records for a specific audit. Brown did not want Barron asking questions, and made things difficult. Also, Brown's payments were to the GPA, and then they would cut checks to Lushis. Barron would have no way of knowing that these large sums were being paid to Lushis without a contract. He would only see payments to GPA. He would have discovered what was happening as part of his audit of the 2017 payments, and then he would be attacked by Benol and Vaughn again. In fact, he did discover it in late 2017, and made sure no payments were made to Langen.
Brown worked hard to keep Barron and Council in the dark, and violated the admin code in doing so. But Barron still managed to figure it out. He was a very thorough and diligent controller, and the Exec was trying his best to keep him in the dark.
"Bernie, do you think this came about as a result of information from the meeting the other day? Was county council on top of this and if so why didn't they do this last year?"
ReplyDeleteLast year, everyone was out of the loop. Although Brown swore solemnly to Council that he would be transparent and would notify them of contracts, he broke his word. He made payments to Lushis with no contract at all.
The resolution you see above is a result of the finance committee and various statements McClure has made to Council over the course of this year. In addition, various members of council have gone to GPA meetings and have seen for themselves what is happening. The revelations in this blog may have helped a little.
I'd say the Finance Committee, led ably by Heckman, really was quite helpful. He did his homework, and his sole agenda is good government. To him, following the Admin Code is a big deal. No matter who us executive or who is on council, I have seen nothing infuriate a council more than when an exec thumbs his nose at county procurement. Even when it is completely unintentional, I have seen councils yell at Brown, Stoffa, Reibman and Brackbill.
That is what has happened here. It's impossible for me to believe that Brown acted unintentionally. But even if he just forget, this is the kind of thing that really pisses off a council.
"Per the Home Rule Charter, the controller is responsible for ensuring there are adequate internal controls in place in the county. It's the first thing listed under the Controller section of the HRC.
ReplyDeleteThat the office doesn't review each check going out to make sure that there is proper authorization is a dereliction of duty. The review of checks by an independent Controller's office is the missing final step in an adequate internal control over disbursements."
There are adequate internal controls in place. But when a county Exec thumbs his nose at the Administrative Code, this can go undiscovered for about a year. This actually was caught late last year.
You completely misunderstand the role of controller in home rule, as do many people. He really serves as an auditor. If he were responsible for reviewing each check that goes out, he would be unable to audit the county departments. It is this way in LC, too. Glenn Eckhart does not review checks to see if they are warranted. He audits. There is only one exception and that is with oneof the pension funds, but then he can't audit that fund.
In other municipalities, the controller reviews and authorizes payment, but then he can't audit his own work.
It is completely understandable that you would think the controller authorizes each payment bc that is the way it is at many places. But if that happened here, we would have to pay a lot more money each year, for the independent audit.
What the Hell is in the water. First Allentown and now Northampton County. It seems even our local government is up for4 sale and going bad. It does seem that in this case the county government stood up to the abuse and acted.
ReplyDeleteThe common denominator is the lawyers. Why is the local press ignoring this? Good job BO.
ReplyDeleteThere was a web story on WFMZ. Northampton levels serious accusations against former exec
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wfmz.com/news/lehigh-valley/northampton-levels-serious-accusations-against-former-exec/756809692
The ET and MC both failed to cover the meeting. In the one GPA MEETING THAT THE morning Call actually covered, it belittled residents of the “little village” of Lower Mount Bethel for daring to insist that one-lane bridges were fine on a scenic bypass. I have not seen any coverage of the county’s disputes with the GPA.
Let me add that the reporter is stretched thin, and is at least covering some things. Not a good time to be a reporter.
ReplyDeleteBernie O'Hare said:
ReplyDelete"You completely misunderstand the role of controller in home rule, as do many people. He really serves as an auditor. If he were responsible for reviewing each check that goes out, he would be unable to audit the county departments. It is this way in LC, too. Glenn Eckhart does not review checks to see if they are warranted."
Uh no, you're wrong. Following your logic the Controller, even though they know the system is being exploited, should stand idly by and let the system be exploited so that they can later audit it to find out that it's been exploited. That's ridiculous.
Of course they should be stepping in and doing their part to make sure that the internal control system is sound. It is one of their main functions under the HRC. They wouldn't necessarily have to look at every check - they could sample the smaller ones and do 100% of the ones over a certain threshold (10k? 25k?)
Also, I'm pretty sure that every check's last stop in Lehigh is the controller's office. I remember reading an MC article where Eckhart was holding up releasing a check (or checks) until the proper documentation showed up.
Whether it's called an internal control there or an "audit" on disbursements (AS THEY'RE BEING MADE), it's something that should be getting done in Northampton County also. It's obviously needed, and it's worrisome that current and past controllers seem to be oblivious to this basic part of the job.
All anyone had to do was ask Peg. It's time for the AG to investigate.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the law firm will sue the county council. Or maybe one of the individuals. Could get interesting.
ReplyDelete7:09, No, I am correct. A controller can call public attention to an abuse. he can sue over an abuse. But he has absolutely no control over the actual payment of bills. He can't stop payments. It is not standing idly by. It is just not one of his powers, in either Lehigh or Northampton County.
ReplyDeleteIf the HRC were changed to make the Controller responsible for reviewing every payment before it is made, then Barron would have caught this right away and before it happened. But on the downside, his office could play no role in the outside audit of county finances every year. That means the county would be paying considerably more for audit services than is currently the case.
You're wrong about Lehigh County. I specifically asked about this on Friday. Lehigh and Northampton are almost identical, with the exception of one pension fund where Glenn actually signs the checks. And because of that, the pension fund has to be separately audited.
Also, at the end of every year, the NorCo Controller does obtain a list of every vendor who received more than $25k, and the controller's office goes through them to determine if the law was followed. That is part of the annual audit of finances. That's why I say with some confidence that this irregularity would have been discovered.
I discussed this situation on Friday with several people who are quite knowledgeable about county finances. I neglected to ask for permission to use their names. I thought, like you, that there was a weakness in our HRC form of government that needs to be remedied. I was given quite an education on a number of internal controls already in place and the segregation of duties to prevent fraud. For example, one person may be authorized to wire money, but another person has to approve the expenditure. But I believe this situation is probably something that should be discussed by a council finance committee. I intend to ask Ron Heckman to invite some county finance people to explain how these payments are made and let them look for any weaknesses. If there is a flaw in our current system, let's fix it. I'm not arguing with you. I do not think that is the case after discussing it with several finance people at the county, but I think a presentation is warranted bc of the concerns you raise. It's good government.
Bernie, with all of the innocent until proven guilty theft of public fundz this firm has been involved with in the Lehighvalley! It would probably be best to investigate there mail room were the shredding takez place? Not that any evidence would be found in the firmz possession or for that matter cash turned into private assetz with the LLC's faked fictitious imaginary common ownership!
ReplyDeleterepublican redd
humanist by design
not a party favor
I think they should be investigated by the state. The AG needs to receive a report. I think the council people discovered some serious issues.
ReplyDeleteNC should claw back any and all previously funded unauthorized payments.
ReplyDelete