Chris Abele's OTHER Transit Scandal

Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele was caught earlier this year trying to rig the bidding process for the contract to run the county's mass transit system.  Abele set up the bidding process to favor an out-of-state for profit company that was particularly unqualified to run a system of this size and had a horrible record in the areas they did serve.  Despite the fact that the company, MV Transportation, scored the lowest of all bidders in the four service related areas, Abele still tried to give them the contract.

Fortunately for transit users and taxpayers, the Milwaukee County Board sniffed out the corruption and denied the contract due to the inappropriate, unethical and illegal way Abele went about things..  As is often the case, it was after the fact that we learned that the problems would have been even greater if Abele had gotten his way.

Unsurprisingly, the shameless Abele is still trying to manipulate things in order to award the contract to this same company.

Now it appears that Abele has a second transit-related scandal on his hands, one which might prove to be even more problematic for him.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that there is another problem with a different contract bidding procedure, this time for the taxi cab services for Medicaid medical transports:

A Milwaukee firm that won, then lost, a contract with the Milwaukee County Transit System for taxi rides for people with disabilities says the bid competition was unfairly tilted toward the longtime incumbent vendor, American United Taxicab Services.

Ismail Harun, president of Soma Transportation LLC, said Friday that bid requirements that all vehicles used for the MCTS cab service be licensed by the City of Milwaukee meant that only American United could qualify.

"It looks like the language they put on the (request for proposals) was only fitting American United," Harun said.

[...]


American United initially sought $756,000 a year on its bid, an increase of about 87% from its current rate of $404,340.

The firm then agreed to lower its bid price to $663,000, a 64% increase.

That was rejected and the contract was rebid, with American United asking for $464,000 per year and Soma seeking $360,000.

Soma was selected by an MCTS evaluation committee, but then rejected last week on an appeal by American United.

Soma does not own or contract with 300 city licensed cabs, as the company claimed, according to the decision by the bid appeals committee to sustain American United's appeal.

What the reporter, Steve Schultze, fails to mention anywhere in his article is that American United is owned by a close friend and political ally of Abele's, State Representative Joe Sanfelippo.

Sanfelippo is the person that Abele paid off to be the face for Act 14, the law that allowed Abele to usurp the power of Milwaukee County government, even though he is particularly unfit for the job.  Sanfelippo is also the person who pushed through the law allowing Abele to pawn off the county's most vulnerable citizens to profiteers.

It's not surprising that Sanfelippo would be strongly interested in keeping that contract.  Due to his manipulating the county's funding for it, creating a monopoly in the taxi business in Milwaukee and exploiting the daylights out of his drivers, Sanfelippo raked in $1.2 million in 2010.  Needless to say, it's probably a good chunk bigger now.  Talk about the real Cash Cab.

Besides the obvious bid rigging - designing the request for bids in such a way that only one company qualifies, à la Sportsmen United - there are two things that need to be emphasized.

One is that Sanfelippo is a raging Teapublican.  Yet Mr. Smaller Government wanted to nearly double his take on just this one contract.  I suppose if he felt that the fix was in, he might as well shoot for the moon

The other thing is how this scandal compares to the MV Transportation scandal.

Both this scandal and the one with with the transit system are similar in that they involve Abele configuring the bidding process to achieve the desired results.  With the MV Transportation, Abele didn't want MTS, the current provider, to keep their contract, so he rigged the process against them.  With the taxis, Abele wanted his BFF Sanfelippo to keep the contract so he manipulated it so that only Sanfelippo's company could get the contract.

But Abele said that he wanted MV Transportation because their administrative cost was supposedly the lowest.  Never mind that their bid was suspiciously low and that they were already asking to renegotiate their bid.  Yet he is pushing for Sanfelippo to get the contract even though his cost would be 25% higher than the winning bid.  Then again, only his minions ever considered him to be fiscally conservative.

Also, Abele would often point out that the current transit system contractor, MTS, had been the contractor for decades and that it was time for a new set of faces and new ideas.  So then why is he comfortable with American United, which has held this contract for nearly two decades?  Wouldn't it be time for a new set of faces and new ideas?

Once again, it will fall upon the County Board to make things right by throwing out this bidding and demanding that Abele do it again, but honestly this time.

I just hope that the County Board does not make the same mistake they did with the bidding process and report this to the Ethics Board and/or the District Attorney.

I, for one, after more than a dozen years of it, am damn sick and tired of having so much corruption in the county executive's suite.

Milwaukee County Dodged Bigger Money Vulture Than Previously Realized

Last week, I wrote about how Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele again thought himself to be above rigged the bidding process in order to pick the for-profit, Texas-based MV Transportation (MV stands for Money Vultures) to take over the Milwaukee County Transit System.  I also pointed out that besides the shady and suspect way that Abele manipulated the process to pick MV Transportation, the company itself has a lengthy history of labor struggles, poor performance and scandalous actions.
the law and had

Fortunately, the County's Administrative Review Panel had a hearing on the bidding process and found that the bidding process was indeed flawed and that the contract could not be given to MV Transportation.

As to be expected, Abele tantrummed about it:

The Milwaukee County Board today cost taxpayers $76.3 million by rejecting a new transit contract.

MV Transportation, a nationally recognized and respected company, was awarded the transit contract last year after winning a competitive bidding process. Two of the losing bidders filed appeals with the County Board. Today, a special committee hand-picked by County Board leaders, spent five minutes in open session and quickly voted to not allow the contract.

“The decision today upholds the status quo and costs taxpayers millions and millions of dollars. Our transit system has been on life-support for years, this contract would have allowed us to put more money into bus service and remake a broken system,” County Executive Chris Abele said. “The County Board’s decision lacks factual support or legal reasoning and it should concern every resident of Milwaukee County who wants their government to save money and run more efficiently.”

Not even a week later, it is being reported that Milwaukee County not only dodged another bullet by rejecting Abele's corrupt plan, but that the bullet was much bigger and more damaging than originally thought.

Via Lisa Kaiser of the Shepherd Express, we find an article in the Dallas News which indicated that things with MV Transportation is worse than previously known.

First we find that their service in Dallas was extremely poor, so much so that the contract had to be redone to such an extent that it was questioned whether it wouldn't be better to start from scratch.  And on top of that, the vulture capitalists running the company are ready to sell it off as fast as possible:

Dallas Area Rapid Transit board members are poised Tuesday to overhaul and extend a $185.9 million contract with the controversial company that provides transportation for elderly and disabled passengers.

The move comes as MV Transportation is putting itself up for sale and after the transit agency has spent months weathering criticisms about the vendor’s performance.

A majority of DART’s 14 board members voiced support for the contract changes earlier this month. But some board members say the alterations are so vast they should solicit other companies’ bids rather than negotiate exclusively with MV.

And yes, there's more:

Veolia and MV were among the companies that submitted bids. MV won. Its takeover of paratransit was a disaster. Passengers complained about poorly trained drivers, out-of-the-way routes and long wait times.

Many of the criticisms echoed public complaints government entities across the country faced after they hired MV for paratransit and bus services. MV declined to comment for this article, citing the ongoing contract negotiations with DART.

The contract restructuring is meant to cover MV’s costs of making operational changes aimed to assuaging riders’ complaints. DART would still save money overall, but changes would likely eat up about $26.3 million in potential savings.

Dick Alexander is the senior vice president for Veolia Transportation. He said the decrease in potential savings under the proposed contract changes is essentially a loss to the public agency.
“That would go to DART and other DART projects,” he said of the lost savings. “Under this scenario, that money’s going to go straight to MV’s pocket.”

So the company is doing such a poor job that to fix the problems is that the cost of fixing the problems was so much, it ate up the savings.  Furthermore, MV was able to manipulate the situation that it would be the taxpayers taking the hit and not their profit margin*.

And anyone's guess is as good as the next as to what would happen when and if the sale of the company goes through.

Instead of his grandstanding and pity parties, Abele should grow up and apologize to the taxpayers for putting them at risk.  Furthermore, he should just resign from office and refer himself to the DA's office for his bid-rigging scheme.  Then again, he has already shown himself to be just as bad - if not worse - than Scott Walker, so he probably has no sense he did anything wrong.

*A profit margin made by laying off workers and cutting services to the elderly and disabled.  This is what Abele calls efficiency?

Walker's Universal Excuse

One of the hot topics of the week in Fitzwalkerstan is the shake up in Scott Walker's corporate-controlled economic development debacle. Walker felt he had to shake up the management of this group by putting in more reliable yes men after the group got caught in illegally bid rigging by offering a favored company tax breaks as it was bidding on a major contract.

Scott Wittkopf points out that Walker's newest appointee is an unqualified crony.

Meh. Walker's entire political career is nothing but one long string of one example of cronyism after another.

But there was a red flag in the article about the shifting of personnel at WEDC (emphasis mine):

WEDC offered a tax break to the company in March, then rescinded it in June after Walker's administration deemed it inappropriate because the company was bidding on a $15 million project to run a statewide school information system.

"We did not feel it was appropriate," Werwie said. "As soon as our office learned of it, we put a stop to it."

That rung a bell with me. I heard a very similar statement from Walker's camp before:

“The Milwaukee County executive's office expressed policy was that county employees were not permitted to use county time or resources to conduct any political activity. Scott Walker expected everyone to follow the law and made that clear publicly and privately," Walker campaign spokeswoman Ciara Matthews said in the statement.

That quote is, of course, in reference to Darlene Wink getting busted doing Walker's campaign work while working in his county executive's office.

And as anyone who is a frequent reader of this here blog can tell you, when it comes to Walker, there's more. There's always more.

I would hazard to guess that the real reason for the shake up in WEDC was not because of the bid rigging. Rather, it was simply because they got caught doing it. It should give one pause and have them wondering how much more of this has gone on or is going on that we haven't caught yet.