Hartford "Political Boss" Makes the System Work for Him, Complete with Conflicts and Self-Help Contract Specs

Today's Hartford Courant gives us an excellent picture of a very creative way of making the municipal government work for you, conflicts of interest be damned.

The municipal entrepreneur in this instance is Abraham L. Giles, referred to as a 'North End political boss.' His scheme involves vulnerable city residents -- evicted tenants. When a tenant is to be evicted, according to the article, there are three stages.

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One, the landlord pays a state marshal to serve eviction papers. Giles happens to be a state marshal.

Two, the landlord pays for the tenant's property to be moved onto the curb. Giles runs a moving service to handle this stage of eviction. And guess which landlord required over $100,000 of just such moving services over the last four years? The Hartford Housing Authority.

Three, the city pays to move the tenant's property to the city yard. Giles has had a no-bid deal with the city to do just that.

The first problem here is allowing a state marshal to have any role in the eviction process other than his official responsibilities.

The second problem is the no-bid deal with the city, and what happened when it came out and was 'corrected.'

The city procurement office says that failure to bid out the moving contract was an oversight. It immediately put the contract out to bid, with specifications that led to only one qualified bidder. You guessed it.

This specifications thing is one of the most silent conflicts of interest going. Why break competitive bidding laws when all you have to do is write the specifications to fit just one company: the one who's already doing the job? We saw it with Halliburton in Iraq, who was hired by the federal government to write the specs for contracts it ended up winning. Easy as pie.

This happens even more at the local level. It's easy for a contractor to write specs that will keep its competitors out, or force them to bid higher. And who's going to have the expertise necessary to know?

Competitors might complain, but it's easy to argue that it's just sour grapes. No one likes to lose.

So, if you can, ask questions when only one company bids for a contract, especially if there were more bidders in the past.

And don't allow state marshals to do business in an area where they have official responsibilities. A city doesn't have to ignore conflicts involving state officials, just because its ethics code doesn't make provision for this. Conflicts are conflicts, and they have an amazing way of undermining public trust at every level.