Freedom Roc's Episodes

Episode 19 features Chris, Drew, and Max discussing Monroe County issues, including the contract with Upstate Telecommunications Corporation.

As promised, here is a copy of the UTC Audit from the State Comptroller's Office.  It shows plenty of evidence of corruption, including:

• "The County sold $2.5 million in County-owned IT assets to UTC; the County then leased these same assets back from UTC, which will result in County taxpayers paying for equipment that they already owned."
• "The County’s request for proposals (RFP) process used to select a vendor for the County’s IT needs was just a perfunctory one. Potential vendors were not informed of the existence of the LDC or the intent to use the LDC as a conduit for the contract as part of the RFP. Consequently, only one vendor, with significant connections to current and former County officials, provided a proposal that included the use of the LDC."
• "According to the CIO, the winning proposal was chosen because it suggested the creation of a local development corporation as a financing option. However, the timing of events shows that UTC had already been established before the County issued the RFP. UTC was established in March 2004 and was incorporated on May 25, 2004 for the purpose of issuing bonds to support the County’s information systems needs, the same scope presented in the County’s RFP dated June 18, 2004."
• "[T]he initial Directors of UTC (the certifying attorney, a partner of UTC’s future accounting firm, and the County Clerk’s husband) were in a position to benefit from, or have knowledge about, the County’s award of this contract to UTC. Furthermore, the Deputy County Executive who signed the letter recommending that the County contract with UTC (which contracted with Siemens and then Navitech) left County employment and shortly thereafter became a consultant for UTC. The County’s CFO left County employment to become COO of the newly-formed Navitech. In addition, one of the subcontractors for the contract with UTC was ECC Technologies, the employer of the County Executive’s stepson."

Do you see anything underhanded here?  Of course you do.  The initial Directors of UTC had inside information.  Only one company had this inside information.  County proponents of the contract left the County to work for UTC or their subcontractors.  Maggie Brooks' stepson works for one of those subcontractors.

What the Democrats aren't telling you, however is that the contract was approved unanimously by the Legislature, which had 15 Republicans and 14 Democrats at the time.  This is a bipartisan effort to fleece the taxpayers.