A special Orange County legislative committee tasked with straightening out the facts surrounding a controversial county IT contract began the first batch of interviews on Nov. 14.
Two county department heads—General Services Commissioner Samantha Sweikata and Human Resources Commissioner Langdon Chapman—gave testimonies pertaining to the $800,000-plus StarCIO contract and fielded questions from the bipartisan committee.
Chaired by county legislator Kevin Hines, the committee comprises legislators Thomas Faggione, Robert Sassi, and Kevindaryán Luján, all appointed by county Legislature Chairwoman Katherine Bonelli.
The special committee was formed in response to allegations by New York Democratic state Sen. James Skoufis, along with several Democratic county legislators, that the StarCIO contract was part of a corrupt scheme involving top-level county officials.
“There were questions posed by colleagues in the Legislature that I felt needed to be answered, and that is why we formed the committee,” Ms. Bonelli told The Epoch Times.
Contract Initiation
At the meeting, Ms. Sweikata laid out the context leading up to the hire of StarCIO at the beginning of this year, including issues with existing IT vendors and the sense of urgency brought by the cyberattack in Suffolk County that disabled essential government functions.
This type of professional service, which involves specialized skills and a high level of professional judgment, is generally exempted from competitive bidding under the state law; under the county policy, such procurement is subject to general contract guidelines when it is not an emergency and cannot be made through a preferred source.
Several quotes were considered in this case, including one from StarCIO, which was determined to be the best fit for the county because of its on-site availability and breadth of services, according to Ms. Sweikata.
“[It] was brought in to look at all our data, our processes, our vendors—our everything—and give us an idea how to prioritize the safety and security of this IT department moving forward,” she said.
According to the contract, for an amount of $64,000, StarCIO owner Isaac Sacolick would perform transitional chief information officer services for eight days on-site and 64 hours of remote work, a price that Ms. Sweikata said wasn’t exorbitant given her observations of industry standards.
Mr. Chapman said at the meeting that he recommended StarCIO to the county’s director of operations, Alicia D’Amico, who solicited his opinion because she was concerned with the performance of the existing IT vendor, with whom the county had spent millions of dollars over several years.
“I deliberately did not tell Alicia that Isaac Sacolick was my sister-in-law’s husband until she came to her own conclusion that she did want to talk to him. I wanted to ensure that Alicia considers this on the merits without even a hint of nepotism,” he told the committee members, adding that he played no part in the following contract initiation and amendments.
“There are husbands and wives in county government; there are parents and children in county government,” he said. “Hiring someone you know is not only perfectly legal, [but also] common—whether one wishes to admit it or not—and it is certainly common in this county government as in many across the state.”
County Attorney Richard Golden told The Epoch Times in a previous interview that the county ethics code didn’t forbid contracting with relatives of employees as long as the employees in question were neither part of the decision-making nor had supervision over those deciding such contracts.
Contract Amendments
As the original contract with StarCIO approached its end, Ms. Sweikata said she and her team reevaluated the situation, including a key public safety IT infrastructure program that had been moving slowly, partly because of understaffing—one planned new deputy hire went for another job at the last minute.“Do we stay with Isaac, who has been guiding us this whole time, or do we stop this altogether and go through that whole procurement process?” she said. “We signed the extension because we felt with my staff that we do not have a deputy, and Isaac is really the person moving the project forward.”
The first major amendment, signed in early July, extended the organizational IT oversight services by Mr. Sacolick and brought in a new manager under him to focus on the public safety program, bringing the total contract value with StarCIO up to $608,400.
In August, the county signed the second amendment with StarCIO to add a second program manager under Mr. Sacolick to work on countywide IT infrastructure programs, resulting in an accumulative contract of $816,400 with the company.
Neither contract amendment is subject to competitive bidding under the continuity exemption for professional services in the county procurement policy, which, according to Ms. Sweikata, is also a standard operating procedure over her past 13 years working in county procurement.
As the contract with StarCIO continued, the county Legislature moved in September to create a new IT department and a new position of chief information officer, with an active job posting with a salary range between $200,000 and $225,000.
Mr. Chapman disputed the allegation that, as human resources commissioner, he delayed the hiring of a permanent chief information officer to benefit his brother-in-law, saying that he couldn’t legally hire anyone until the Legislature adopted the new position.
He added that the allegations made by Mr. Skoufis and several county legislators brought harm to his family, including his brother-in-law’s children and his mother-in-law.
What’s Next?
Two more interview sessions are scheduled by the special committee on Nov. 20 and 21; interviewees include County Executive Steve Neuhaus, Deputy County Executive Harry Porr, Mr. Golden, Ms. D’Amico, and four county legislators alleging corruption: Mike Paduch, Mike Anagnostakis, Genesis Ramos, and Laurie Tautel.The special committee approved the interview list during its housekeeping meeting on Nov. 8, which included county employees and officials.
“My thought was that we hear from our own people first,” Mr. Hines said at the meeting, adding that the list might expand in the future given the content gathered from the documents and interviews.
The committee is due to submit a report to the rules committee at the conclusion of its review.
On Nov. 2, the county Legislature voted unanimously to form the special committee, formerly called the Committee to Review Technology Contracts.
Ms. Bonelli told The Epoch Times that several considerations went into selecting committee members, including availability, whether a legislator had made a public stance on the subject contract, and that there be a balanced representation of the Republican and Democratic parties.
