Changes Proposed for Revenue Authority Bidding Process

Changes could be coming to the Baltimore County Revenue Authority's policies on contracting for services when there is only one potential bidder.

The changes come months after the authority hired Florida golf pro Bill Madonna to at the Fox Hollow golf course.

The contract, which was never put out for bid, has been .

The Revenue Authority chief executive, William "Lynnie" Cook, in a November interview with Patch, said the practice of allowing single-source contracts is a common, proper practice for the authority.

"This is not unusual for the Revenue Authority to have a contract that it doesn't bid out," Cook said. "We're allowed to do that. We're different from Baltimore County government. We're designed to be different."

"The county needs us to be different," Cook added. "It needs a partner that is more of a business. We're on a continuum between a business and a government agency. It has the attributes of both and that benefits the county."

The authority, which was created by the state legislature in the 1950s, is a quasi-public government agency that manages public parking and golf courses around the county.

The board on Tuesday is expected to discuss the issue of single-source contracts when it considers revising the authority's procurement policies.

One of the proposed changes would require the authority's board to approve and publicly publish a resolution stating when contracts can not be competitively bid for certain reasons. The summary of the resolution would be required to be published in a newspaper within 10 days of approval. 

The board would also have to approve any single-source contract in excess of $25,000, under the proposed changes.

The authority has come under some criticism for its procurement practices including no-bid, no-contract arrangements with former board members who performed marketing and legal work for the board. Some of the criticisms have been focused on the hiring of firms and businesses that have relationships with board members or authority employees.

Cook and Madonna appear to have a prior acquaintance.

By one account, Cook may have attempted to hire Madonna for a position with the Baltimore Municipal Golf Corporation when Cook ran its golf operations.

Cook, in November, said he did not try to hire Madonna. He acknowledged taking golf lessons from the instructor. He also acknowledged staying at the Florida hotel where Madonna's golf instruction business is headquartered in each of the last "eight or nine years, I guess" but said he never ran into Madonna until this year before the authority hired him to run the golf academy.

"That's what was so unique," Cook said. "We ran into each other at the PGA show that year. I had no idea what he was doing."

Last month, Cook acknowledge soliciting the owner of a company that supplies golf carts to the authority to facilitate a  for him and a friend to the exclusive Pine Valley Golf Club in New Jersey.

In 2010, the authority hired an insurance firm that had both business and personal relationships with at least two members of a committee that awarded the contract.

A September email written by Cook, chief executive of the authority, describes the process in which multiple members of the search committee acknowledged privately that they, too, had relationships with other bidders.

The insurance company, Willis, was selected in early 2010 by a four-person committee made up of Cook, board members Hanan "Bean" Sibel, Joseph Blair and Karen Andes, the authority's chief financial officer.

In a email written to board members in September, Cook explains that three of the committee members had "social, personal and or business relationships with one or more people who worked for" three of the four insurance brokers who bid for the contract.

"The associations were all discussed in the initial committee meeting (and again at the time of the interviews)," Cook wrote in the email. "They were not deemed to be a problem. In fact, Mr. Sibel pointed out that there were not that many brokerage firms in Baltimore that were capable of handling the specific business needs of the authority and that it was quite possible that we would all know someone."

The September email from Cook is the first public discussion of the personal relationships.

Cook, in an interview in November, brought up the issue and said such conflicts are to be expected. It's those relationships that make the board beneficial to the operations of the authority, Cook said.

"That's the benefit of having board members with business backgrounds," Cook said. "(The members) are going to know everybody."

In the end, the authority went with Willis, a firm with whom both Blair and Cook acknowledged business relationships. Cook wrote that he also had social acquaintance with members of the firm, including playing golf with one and living in the same neighborhood as another for over 25 years.

Cook wrote that the relationships were not considered an issue.

In a separate interview, Cook said the committee did not seek advice of the county ethics board or attorneys about whether the relationships constituted an ethical dilemma.