I am so shocked that the governor, a former prosecutor, would make an illegal contract without an open process:
HARRISBURG, May 13 – State Rep. Rob Matzie, D-Beaver/Allegheny, today released documents relating to a purported no-cost contract awarded by Gov. Tom Corbett to NICUSA Inc., that show the administration had previously agreed to pay the company millions of dollars just days after the contract was awarded.
Pennsylvania Interactive LLC., a subsidiary of NICUSA, received a sole-source contract – valid as of Dec. 1, 2012 – for the renovation and management of Pennsylvania’s state websites. The Corbett administration has attempted to justify the no-bid contract by claiming it would have no cost to the state.
A spokesperson for the administration repeated the no-cost claim to the media as recently as a month ago. Yet, a public document authorized and signed on Dec. 20, 2012 by then Deputy Secretary of Transportation Mark Compton, who is now the chief executive officer for the Turnpike Commission, and obtained by Matzie through a Right-to-Know request, shows that just 21 days after the start of the contract, the administration authorized the payment of millions of dollars in state funds to NICUSA.
The document, a PennDOT work order for the contract, states that Pennsylvania must pay NICUSA $2 for every driver’s record requested from the PennDOT website by a data broker or insurance company. NICUSA has requested payment of more than $2.5 million for this service for the first three months of the year, despite the fact that PennDOT has not yet transitioned its website to NICUSA.
“At some point in the future, NICUSA will host the state’s website and its computers and software will do these transactions,” Matzie said. “But today Pennsylvania taxpayers are being double-billed millions of dollars for a service that has not yet been provided by the vendor. Where is the accountability to the taxpayers?
“The three work orders approved by the Corbett administration prove they knew the agreement with NICUSA would cost the state millions,” Matzie said. “But the timeline of the work orders contradicts the administration’s excuse that an urgent need to replace the two-year-old website design is the reason for the use of taxpayer funds.”
Matzie discovered that the opposite is true; the multi-million-dollar work order was approved on Dec. 21, 2012, a month before the so-called “no-cost” state website overhaul order was approved on Jan. 17, 2013.
Gee, another corrupt Republican. Who is also a politician holding a high political office. Do you suppose that the IRS has any interest in looking into whether or not Cotbrtt paid taxes on the money that he stole from the taxpayers? Or why Karl Rove’s 501(c) is allowed to be a non-profit, tax exempt group when it’s clearly a political operation? That’s suppose to be against the law. Sure Miller and Lerner should be fired. But, the head of this snake is Bush appointee Douglas Shulman. This guy was tasked with screwing up the IRS and helping to bring Obama down. Why an Obama operative wasn’t keeping an eagle eye on what Shulman was up to is baffeling.
You just don’t get the application of private sector efficiencies to the government sector. Republican governors are too big to fail.
I’m equally shocked. Who could have foreseen a Republican official executing an illegal contract and attempting to pay out on it as fast as possible so nobody would get wise?