The City of San Antonio has spent hundreds of thousands of tax dollars and an obscene amount of time pushing forward with a proposal to hire a broker to manage the City communications networks in spite of recommendations from industry experts to the contrary.
Beginning in 2005 certain members of the City of San Antonio IT Department (ITSD-Information Technology Services Department) pushed through segments of a plan to hire a communications broker to manage the City's communications systems. This process will culminate with a pre-submittal conference early in August and the award of a contract after the October closing date.
Widespread media coverage of the City playground fiasco where the Parks and Recreation Director mislead Council concerning years of missed inspections brought to light the fact that City employees do not always tell the truth and will at times provide less than honest answers to City Council inquiries. This dishonesty limits Council's ability to make informed decisions. You can sit and listen to numerous speeches by ITSD experts and read through stacks of reports submitted by the City's IT department without hearing the truth concerning this communication consultant boondoggle. Nothing can erase the fact that City Council has been lied to AGAIN.
Any objections during the initial meetings of 2005 were shouted down. Any discussion was quelled. Statements by respondents to the initial RFP questioning the City's unorthodox decision to hire a broker were ignored. The statement by the firm awarded the contract that they couldn't understand why the City was going down this path but would gladly take the money and run was pushed aside. Objections by Councilperson Guajardo supported by written documentation from the City's new Telecommunications Manager were over-ruled by City Manager Sculley ignoring over sixty (60) years of telecommunications experience. Official complaints were squashed. Grievances at Sculley's level were deemed ungrievable. Municipal Integrity issued the usual unfounded/lack of evidence finding after taking numerous very similar statements appearing to have been read from a prepared script. The consultant was hired and a report was published which ITSD has used time and again to justify millions of dollars in additional costs bloating an ever growing appetite for tax dollars.
The consultant is not at fault for the fact that a flawed report was published. ITSD staff deliberately manipulated the process and the information in an effort to produce the report they bought for $75,000 of our tax dollars. The consultant's access to personnel and information was channeled through a long time ITSD manager who had been investigated by the now defunct Office of Municipal Integrity. An internal audit of his department's books uncovered padded invoices, illegal contracts, illegal purchases, fraudulent budget documents and other billing irregularities. Audit findings were illegally kept secret and a doctored audit/ITSD response published. The IT Director, CIO and Budget Director had all received copies of an email from the Municipal Integrity Manager admitting that the investigation initiated by the City's new Telecommunications Manager was closed with the notation unfounded/lack of evidence but had actually documented that the long time ITSD Manager and others had clandestinely for the last twenty-five years used City Department's telephone budgets to pay for things completely unrelated to City phones, had nothing to do with shared telephone costs, and resulted in them (City Departments) being billed for millions of dollars of goods and services that should have been budgeted and paid for by ITSD. His ability to tap a bottomless pit of money in the form of this slush fund resulted in the illegal siphoning of every City Department's telephone budget (including state/federal grant funds) to pay for among other things the ITSD trophy case, ITSD training, remodeling, department specific purchases and data equipment. This revelation must have come as no surprise to the Budget Director as his recorded testimony during the investigation was that of all the departments his office works with ITSD was the most difficult and he didn't have much confidence in their (ITSD's) numbers. During the investigation a twenty-year City veteran testified that she had long-term conflicts with the manager in question over ITSD billing practices. An Office of Management and Budget analyst testified that even after months of work and all the contact and repeated inquiries he still did not have a clear understanding of ITSD billing practices. Being fully aware of the real investigation findings a decision was made to place this manager in a position of authority where he could oversee the process, restrict access to personnel and was the prime source of information used in the report. What better way to get an independent, outside authority to write the kind of report you need than to orchestrate the process and supply all the facts.
The act of having millions of dollars of goods and services that had nothing to do with shared telephone costs or were completely unrelated to City phones placed in the City's ledger as TELEPHONE expenses for up to twenty-five years artificially inflated the amount of funds recorded as having been spent supporting E911, our health clinics, our fire stations, our police stations, our libraries, our airport and every other City entity using a City phone. These fraudulent figures were quoted to the consultant who dutifully noted these facts in his report. He had no idea that they were bogus as all information was funneled through the ITSD manager who helped create the falsified records, reports, etc. And had a great interest in keeping the deception secret. The Council has been using this and other fraudulent reports, the fraudulently inflated City Departments telecommunications budgets, and other false information to chart our City's course into the future. The City is pushing ahead with several plans based on deliberately biased reports and purposefully planted misinformation that will shape the future of our City's ability to communicate with the citizens they serve.
If the City of San Antonio Management and Budget Director goes on record with the statement that he didn't have much confidence in their (ITSD's) numbers why should City Council believe them.
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