Investigation clears Richmond police car purchase deal
TIMES-DISPATCH
In the wake of a critical report over how police cars were purchased, the city is seeking a new procurement director.
Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney Michael N. Herring plans to seek no charges related to the city's nearly $1 million purchase of police cars that violated procurement rules.
"At this point, there's no evidence to support anything criminal or corrupt took place," Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Michael E. Hollomon said.
Instead, he said, it appears that city officials misinterpreted procurement rules in 2007 when the city bought 40 Ford Crown Victoria police cruisers from Sheehy Ford of Richmond for $993,520 -- an average of $24,838 per vehicle.
City Auditor Umesh V. Dalal concluded in a report in July that the Department of Procurement Services wrongly treated the purchase as though only one vendor could provide the vehicles when numerous Ford dealers across the city and nation could have.
City code requires all contracts with private vendors to be awarded after competitive sealed bidding or negotiation, although exceptions can be made if only one source or vendor is practically available. Eric R. Mens, who resigned Aug. 30 as director of procurement services, authorized the sole-source purchase on Nov. 27, 2007, according to Dalal's report.
"In this case, they thought the one source for Ford Crown [Victorias] was Ford Motor Corp.," Hollomon said.
He noted that the city requested bids from several local dealers and picked the lowest of the three received.
Dalal's office found that the deputy director of procurement services, who wasn't named in the auditor's report, had instructed a contract specialist to send faxes to three Ford dealerships requesting bids for the vehicles.
The faxes went out at 3:30 p.m. Nov. 7, 2007, and they required responses 17½ hours later, at 9 a.m. Nov. 8, 2007 -- well short of the city's requirement that bid invitations be posted publicly for at least 10 days.
The contract with Sheehy, which is based in Chesterfield County, was later challenged by a manager with Crossroads Ford of Virginia in Prince George County. Sheehy's bids were more than $3,700 lower than those of Crossroads Ford and more than $5,500 lower than those of Universal Ford of western Henrico County, according to the responses.
Hollomon said the commonwealth's attorney's office reviewed the auditor's case file and additional information, which he would not describe. He did not rule out seeking charges if additional information comes to light.
The city is advertising for a new director and deputy director of procurement services. Garland W. Williams, assistant director of budget and strategic planning, is serving as acting director.
Contact Will Jones at (804) 649-6911 or
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Reader Reactions
The cost per car was fair, and as long as no dealer got early notice, the process was fair albeit flawed by the too-short response period. Wasn’t Mr. Mens the guy who ok’d many of Doug Wilder’s purchases as “emergencies” despite them not meeting the required emergency criteria. So if there were competitive bids, and the City went with the lowest bid, and purchasing director resigned, too. Not too bad a deal.
tbone: can you elaborate?
The investigation must have been getting too close to those in the city government who received a “refund” from Sheely. This is just another glaring instance of the corruption that infects the Richmond city government. Third world for sure.
Crossroads left out that they had hired all of Sheehy’s Rejects, to mess cars up for them, and maybe that is why Richmond did not want to buy from them.
They got the lowest price out of the dealers who made that unbelievably short deadline. Maybe another dealers’ sales rep was off that day, came in at 9am the next day only to find out they missed the deadline, would have provided an even lower price.
So the bottom line is: Richmond PD still got the lowest price for the cars.
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