By Adam Pagnucco.
Two months ago, I reported that MCPS had used a $105,000 emergency procurement contract to hire a crisis communications contractor to help it deal with the apocalyptic Beidleman scandal. Now the county’s inspector general has found that MCPS violated its own procurement policy in awarding the contract. The investigation by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) was prompted by a hotline complaint alleging that MCPS’s procurement practices appeared “sloppy.”
In a memorandum of investigation released today, Inspector General Megan Davey Limarzi began by providing a timeline of the procurement. The performance period with the selected vendor began on August 14, 2023 – three days after the Washington Post broke news of the scandal. In September and October, the contract was approved by MCPS’s director of communications, chief of staff and chief operating officer. The school board approved it on October 12. In November, the contract was extended. The vendor (Precision Strategies LLC) was paid $105,000 in February and April for a total of $210,000.
Note that the vendor was working for MCPS for months before the contract was officially approved.
In general, the OIG noted that “Emergency procurements carry an elevated risk of fraud, waste, or abuse due to less stringent review and approval requirements. Many of the controls and safeguards governing traditional procurements do not apply to emergency procurements, thereby allowing for less competition, scrutiny and documentation.”
In describing this specific emergency procurement, the OIG wrote:
*****
MCPS’ Procurement Manual allows for the use of emergency procurements when “[a]n emergency may arise in order to protect personal safety, life or property (i.e., an occurrence of a serious, urgent, and threatening nature that demands immediate action to avoid termination of essential services or a dangerous condition).” The use of this procurement method to acquire crisis management and communications services to primarily manage the negative publicity generated by media interest in the Beidleman investigation does not meet the criteria detailed in the Procurement Manual.
A senior MCPS official involved in the approval process told the OJG that the procurement “felt like it was rushed… and described being directed to “figure out a way to make this work.” MCPS’ director of procurement told the OJG that they believed the use of an emergency procurement in this case was justified because immediate action was necessary, “critical situations were happening,” and communications services were needed to manage the volume of public and media inquiries regarding the misconduct allegations against Principal Beidleman.
While Beidleman’s actions and the subsequent investigation created increased scrutiny and complaints involving MCPS leadership and staff, the situation does not appear to have placed “personal safety, life, or property at risk”. Similarly, dealing with the increased volume of inquiries, although burdensome, was not consistent with the type of “serious, urgent, and threatening nature that demands immediate action” required by the Procurement Manual. Furthermore, even if MCPS could justify using an emergency procurement method to initially acquire these services, it is improbable that the situation was still at the same critical intensity in February 2024, calling into question the necessity of a contract extension using an emergency procurement method.
*****
The OIG also noted that the services provided under the contract “seem more geared to responding to reputational risk than countering an incident that would lead to the ‘termination of essential services or a dangerous condition.’” To the OIG, that reinforced the inappropriate use of this contracting method.
This OIG investigation provides more evidence of the chaotic and incompetent response by MCPS to the epic Beidleman scandal previously documented in the Jackson Lewis report and the journalism of Alexandra Robbins. (See Robbins’s MoCo360 articles of January 12, January 26 and February 1.) While some senior MCPS officials of this time, including the former superintendent and the former chief operating officer, are now gone, new Superintendent Thomas Taylor must finish the job and cleanse MCPS of the remnants of its ancien régime. Only then can MCPS move on to better days and restore its status as one of the nation’s finest school systems.