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Venice
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Company owned by city's computer department head secretly billed over $12,000 to the city for work that would normally fall under his job description; City Manager George Hunt calls it "an error in judgment," and sweeps it under the rug Page 1 |
Page 2 >>> Got a comment? Make it here. Related:
At issue were four invoices from an unknown company named Petra Software (archived version of site). Petra, it turns out, was wholly owned by Steve Randall. Petra had been selling services to the city. Randall had kind of forgotten to let anyone currently working at city hall know that he and Petra were one and the same. City Manager George Hunt announced that it was a lapse of judgment, it was illegal, but the city had gotten more than they paid for. "No harm, no foul," is how he was quoted in the papers. A $40,000 price tag was arbitrarily tagged on to the 'value' of the work received. The reported four invoices from Petra totaled $12,140.00. Hunt told the Venice Gondolier in May of 2001 that the invoices were for "software, program support and training," That became the official description, and nobody ever looked back. "We've already dealt with all that," is the phrase that keeps getting repeated whenever anyone asks about the specifics of the invoiced charges. Another useful phrase that gets bandied about: "an error in judgment." The invoices, and the story around them, tell a very different story. Here's a breakdown of what the city was actually charged for, with links to copies of the actual invoices provided by Petra:
Read that again: "software, program support and training." While software is mentioned, there is no indication of what that software is. Moreover, the city was billed for the installation of existing software, not for any purchase of new software. So we really didn't get any software. Training isn't even mentioned on the bills. Support? OK, now that's actually on the invoices. When asked about the specifics, City Manager George Hunt defended the other charges as justifiable under the description of overtime: "We don't pay our salaried employees overtime." So now the official description is a web site, overtime and support. Wait. Web site? What web site?
Problem: nobody seems to know where that disc is. Venice Florida! dot com has asked for an electronic copy of the original site, that request was dated 5/31/02. When asked by Venice Florida! dot com, George Hunt stated that he did not have it and had never actually seen it or its contents. Hunt stated that Emergency Services Director (and former Venice Police Chief) Joe Slapp had the disc. Slapp stated to Venice Florida! dot com by phone on June 10 that he had seen the disc, but that it was in either Hunt or Randall's possession. Randall stated to Venice Florida! dot com in a phone interview on June 10 that he had given it to Hunt and that he doesn't have the files anymore.
He did give the company's address (a mail drop in Sarasota), an e-mail address and a contact name of Jim Gardner. No phone number was given. Contacted by Venice Florida! dot com on June 12, Gardner denied having anything to do with Petra. He was not an employee or an officer of the company. He's merely a longtime friend of Randall's and he attends the same church. Gardner denied that he was aware that he was listed on paperwork filed with the city. Although the checks are payable to Petra and Jim Gardner (here's an example: front - back), he denied ever seeing or handling the checks from the city. His signature or any mention of his name is notably missing from the endorsement on the checks. He stated that he has never been an employee or officer of Petra Software and should not have been listed on the city's paperwork, that he just did some odd jobs for Randall. "I want to be clear on this, as Steve is a good guy and I don't have any problem with him doing this stuff, but I had nothing to do with Petra other than doing some work here and there. Mostly I was paid in cash, which was the way my wife wanted it." Gardner stated that he didn't know what was meant by some of the vaguely worded support charges that appear on the invoices, but the rest of the charges were all familiar to him. Gardner claims he did do a router configuration as well as set up a few computers. He also remembered doing the "Client Access Express Installation" that Randall / Petra submitted a $1,680 bill for. As to the rest of the charges on the invoices, "Steve did the rest of it [the work]." Gardner stated that he and Randall built a city web site demo of around 25 pages on Gardner's computer, a seeming contradiction of the invoiced description of merely "several links and pages." He is not sure if it was ever hosted anywhere. "We were going to host it on ChristianWebHost, but then Steve got into trouble with the city over Petra, so I'm not sure if it ever did get hosted. I stopped doing work for Steve right around that time." He has since lost all of the electronic files, although he states he still has printed hard copies of some of the pages. Gardner stated that he was unsure of the total amount paid to him, but that it was "...right around $2,000, give or take a couple of hundred." So what happened to the other $10,000?
ChristianWebHost offers a pretty good package deal: $107 a year for 200MBs of space and 200 e-mail accounts. Randall charged $1,200 a year (which is an extremely high price for web hosting) to the city to share web space with his company's web site. That's over a 900% markup that Randall knowingly pocketed right there. There is no reason on Earth why the city could not have contracted directly with ChristianWebHost or any other hosting company if they actually needed hosting at that time.
Actually, since the city site was being hosted as a sub-folder on Petra's own web site, not as its own separate web site, the hosting was no additional expense whatsoever to Randall. That's assuming the site was ever hosted at all.
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