After the Town Council approved more than $1 million in professional service contracts last month, some questioned whether Secaucus does an adequate job attracting proposals from the best companies, or simply hires firms that are politically connected. Noting that Secaucus received scant response to some of the requests for proposals (RFPs) that were advertised, the three Independents on the council, and some residents, questioned whether the town advertises its RFPs widely enough.
Town Administrator David Drumeler, who handles the RFPs for professional service contracts, and makes recommendations to the Town Council about which companies should be hired, has long argued that Secaucus does more than legally required and is in line with other municipalities in the state.
“If you talk to other administrators, I think you will find that Secaucus really is not an aberration in terms of how we award our professional service contracts,” Drumeler said last month.
“Professional contractors don’t come under the same law as other bidders.” – Deborah Cole
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Professional contractors different
Professional service contracts are awarded to firms that provide specialized expertise in certain areas – lobbying, legal services, or engineering, for example. In many ways the bidding rules for hiring those firms are not as stringent as for other kinds of contractors.
“Professional contractors don’t come under the same law as other bidders,” said Deborah Cole, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey League of Municipalities in Trenton.
She explained there are two ways contracts can be awarded to professional service contractors: the “fair and open process,” and the “non-fair and open process.”
Under the fair and open process, which Secaucus uses, municipalities are not required to hire the professional who offers the lowest price, “because the assumption is there may be other considerations that have to be taken into account,” Cole said. “For example, the municipality may have more faith in a certain professional. Or one company may have more experience, or may have more experience working with the municipality.”
In addition, under the fair and open process, there are limits on how much contractors can give to elected officials in the town.
Under the non-fair and open process, municipalities can award contracts to whomever they want, without advertising publicly and fielding proposals, and there are fewer restrictions regarding political contributions as well.
Cole said it is common for towns to hire professionals who have an established rapport with local administrators.
Drumeler’s counterparts in North Bergen, West New York, and Jersey City all confirmed that they regularly give contracts to professionals whom they feel comfortable with, and whom they believe have done excellent work for their towns in the past.
“Look at it this way; you’re going to be working very closely with your contractors,” said Chris Pianese, town administrator for North Bergen. “You want to make that working relationship is as easy and smooth as it can be. You don’t want problems. So you are going to go with professionals who you find easy to work with over people you don’t know.”
Jersey City’s Business Administrator, Brian O’Reilly, said he likes to “spread work around” among many different contractors, but would not give work to anyone he thinks would give him “hassles.”
Joseph McConnell, town administrator in West New York said, “If a contractor has worked well in the past, I’m inclined to use them again if they respond [to an RFP].”
“This is cronyism at its worst.” – Susan Pirro
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Similarly, Drumeler said towns would not want to dump an attorney who is working on ongoing litigation.
Critic responds
But these arguments don’t sit well with at least one critic.
“They may be following the letter of the law, but they are not following the spirit of the law, and this is clearly not a fair and open process,” said 3rd Ward Council candidate Susan Pirro. “This is cronyism at its worst. Last month they awarded 23 contracts, and I think they had something like 27 proposals. That tells you something. That is not a competitive process. Anyone can see there is a problem here.”
She added that despite limits on campaign contributions under the fair and open process, she believes most contracts still go to professionals with political ties. Mayor Dennis Elwell has denied this charge in the past.
Only one bid?
Another point of contention among critics was Secaucus’ use of two government Web sites – www.SecaucusNJ.org and the League of Municipalities Web site – to advertise its RFPs.
Since several of the town’s RFPs attracted only one proposal, some argued that the town may need to do broader advertising, perhaps in newspapers.
But again, other Hudson County administrators said one bid isn’t unusual.
“It depends on the service,” Pianese said. “I’ve seen 10 [proposals] come in for some services, but then for other services we’ll get only one.”
Pianese said that with the bad economy, he has noticed in increase in the number of proposals coming in, “because more companies and more professionals are looking for work right now.”
McConnell said it’s not uncommon for West New York to get only one or two bids for some services as well. He said he has not noticed an uptick in the number of proposals the city is getting right now.
Cole noted that the law does not require municipalities to get a minimum number of proposals before awarding a contract.
“A municipality can choose to rebid if they feel they didn’t get enough of a response,” Cole noted. “But as long as the RFP was publicly advertised, they’ve followed the law.”
Last month the Independent faction of the Town Council – Michael Gonnelli, John Bueckner, and Gary Jeffas – tried to get the governing body to rebid some of the services that received only one proposal. However they were outvoted by the four Democrats on the council – Mayor Elwell, Dawn McAdam, John Reilly, and John Shinnick – who hold the majority of seats.
Reach E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.