Greensboro City Attorney Explains No Contact with Local Elected Officials , Councilman Zack Matheny Are You Listening!

The City of Greensboro weekly memo on 7-13-2012 from the new City Manager Denise Turner Roth has a interesting twist which the new City Attorney Mujeeb Shah-Khan wanted all the Greensboro City Council to understand.

Here is a link to the IFYI from the City Manager HAT TIP: EDCONE ON THE LINK

In the memo the Greensboro City Attorney on a update for the Request for Proposals (RFP) on waste recycling had this to say,

"City Attorney will be contacting representatives of the proposing companies to remind them to have NO CONTACT with elected or appointed officials as we continue this process to it's conclusion. The no contact provision is in Section 2.6 within the RFP document"

this is what 2.6 says in the rfp documents

2.6 VERBAL AGREEMENTS

No verbal agreement or conversation with any officer, agent, or employee of the City, either before or after execution of the Contract, shall affect or modify any of the terms or obligations contained in the Contract. Any such verbal agreement or conversation shall be considered as unofficial information and in no way binding upon the City or the Contractor. Proposers should have no contact with elected officials or appointed officials.

both proposals can be found here, RFP's

Why is this so important because this same verbal agreement was also in the rfp for the waste hauling as well, but as we have seen in the past month, Councilman Zack Matheny (who forgot to mention he suddenly works for a recycling company that uses trash hauling equipment) had a huge dust up with members of one of the companies bidding to haul off the trash from Greensboro in a meeting before these proposals were brought to the city and as we have seen from the above sections of the RFP the Greensboro Councilman Zack Matheny should not have met privately with one of the bidders. Here is what John Hammer from the Rhino Times said in a post titled "Zack's Verbal Attacks Becomes Memo War"

What started all of this was the June 19 City Council meeting, when the council discussed the two- to three-month contract to provide solid waste disposal service while the new consultant went over the proposals and made a recommendation for the multi-year contract. Waste Connections had the low bid by about $200,000 on that contract according to their own figures.

When Fadul was at the podium, Matheny said, "I've got a question for you, when you met with me in my office, did you tell me that you might need a 30 day extension of up to 45 days?"Fadul replied, "No sir, I did not."

Matheny said, "Tim, you're telling me right now, in front of this council, that's not what you told me?"

Fadul said, "I'm telling you that I did not say that and I'm telling you there was also a third person in that room when we were having that conversation."

Matheny interrupted but Fadul finished his statement, "You can ask him the same question."

After a couple other comments Matheny said, "I can't do business with somebody who lies."

Later Matheny went into another diatribe about Fadul when he said Fadul was misleading the council, and when Fadul stood up to go to the podium to respond, a red-faced Matheny pointed at Fadul and yelled, "Sit down."

What City Councilman Zack Matheny did was wrong and was the straw that broke the camels back in that now in regards to RFP's that there is a section 2.6 in both proposals where the companies who are bidding are not to contact city officials and vice a versa where city officials know better to be in contact with these companies. It is time for all local elected officials to understand their jobs and not meet with these companies because we might see another blow up where a sitting councilmember calls out one of  the companies for lying to him.

It is glad to see the new City Attorney say this in a memo but i hope it will also be in his own memo again to reiterate to the local elected officials to not meet with the bidding companies on a RFP at all.