Todd Bensman & Robert Riggs

CITY PROBE OF ALLEGED ETHICS VIOLATIONS FAULTS THREE TOP OFFICIALS ON 911 CONTRACT DEAL

DEPUTY FIRE CHIEF, OTHERS CITED FOR "CONDUCT UNBECOMING" DISPUTE FINDINGS

Jul 26, 2005 10 pm US/Central
By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs
The Investigators
CBS-11 News

An internal investigation has concluded that three members of a City of Dallas vendor selection committee violated ethics rules by having improper contact with the company that won a $5.2 million job overhauling the city?s emergency 911 computer system.

The internal Fire/Rescue Department investigation, accelerated and broadened following a June 22 CBS-11 News report, upheld allegations of ?conduct unbecoming an employee? against Deputy Chief Joseph Kay, Capt. Steven Coffman and the city?s Senior Information Technology Manager Lyndal Chaffin. Disciplinary hearings are planned, although all three vehemently denied any wrongdoing associated with the city?s multi-million-dollar effort to upgrade its 911 Computer Assisted Dispatch system.

A final report obtained by CBS-11 News said the three city officials who served on a vendor evaluation team for the past 18 months improperly accepted ?gratuities? in the form of meals from San Diego-based Tritech Software Systems before the company?s selection had received final approvals. A half dozen other city officials associated with the selection process accepted meals from Tritech and other prospective vendors but were exonerated of any wrongdoing, according to the final report.

City rules handed to all members of the selection committee and prospective vendors expressly stated that no unauthorized contact may occur between the two sides to guard against any public perception of favoritism, according to a copy obtained by CBS-11.

Item number 4 of ?Instructions to Proposees? reads: ?There is to be no unauthorized contact between proposee and user departments during the bidding process or evaluation process without prior approval ??

Chief Kay, Capt. Coffman and Lyndal Chaffin denied to investigators that they had committed any wrongdoing or that they were unduly influenced by accepting meals from Tritech executives, including one June 8 celebration dinner discovered by CBS-11 the very evening the City Council approved Tritech?s contract. The celebratory dinner attended by the three officials took place at the posh Al Biernat?s in Oak Lawn where a Kobe/Angus filet mignon steak costs $69.

Despite denials of wrongdoing, investigators stated in their report that Chief Kay, Capt. Coffman and Lyndal Chaffin all ?failed to avoid the risk and appearance of impropriety that was depicted by the Channel 11 newscast? by attending the celebration dinner at Al Biernat?s. Investigators also upheld a second allegation that Chief Kay accepted a meal from Tritech in March, months before the council approved the tentative selection of Tritech as the vendor.

Dallas Police Capt. Jack Bragg, who served on the committee with Kay, reported the dinner to his superiors after, he said, Chief Kay urged him to join them. His supervisor, Dallas Police Deputy Chief Barbara Smith, expressed deep concern about the March dinner. According to a March 17 email from Business and Procurement Director Mark Duebner, Chief Smith reported that ?Chief Kay is close to retirement and based on some conversations when the evaluation team was in California (visiting Tritech) that she thinks he might be lining up a job as a consultant with them.?

City leaders quietly removed Chief Kay from the committee to avoid the appearance of any further impropriety that might result in a public controversy and threaten to delay the long-running project.

Chief Kay denied he had ever sought a job from Tritech nor been offered one. He also denied that accepting the two meals was improper. He said the one in March at a Dallas Mexican food restaurant occurred after the committee selected Tritech and that the one in June at Al Biernat?s took place after the city cou ncil approved its choice.

?Did accepting a dinner from a vendor constitute receipt of a gratuity? I don?t think of it as that any more than getting a meal at a restaurant for half price or receiving tickets for a sporting event or having a continental breakfast at a vendor sponsored seminar,? Chief Kay wrote in a statement to investigators.

City ethics rules in several areas reinforce a strict ban on contact between selection committee members and vendors as a means of forestalling any possible development of personal relationships that might influence a contract selection decision.

In June, CBS-11 also learned that Chief Kay and other fire officials had a prior relationship with the very Tritech officials who were trying to sell their proposal to the Dallas selection committee. Chief Kay and a top Tritech executive acknowledged knowing each other from various conferences pre-dating the process.

For instance, Chief Kay was among several city officials who attended a 3-day software conference at the posh, beachside Hotel Del Coronado near San Diego a full year before the Dallas selection process began. The 2003 event was a users ?training? conference for a 911 software produced by a company called DECCAN International, which has close business ties to Tritech and leases space from Tritech.

The fire department?s internal investigative report dismissed CBS-11?s disclosure about Kay?s attending the conference as ?false and misleading.? The fire department report said DECCAN was not sufficiently related to Tritech and therefore the chief?s attendance ?should not be considered as misconduct.?

But Latha Nagaraj, DECCAN?s president, said Tritech is the primary marketing agent for all of her company?s fire department software. According to the conference guest list, Tritech sales agents - and its current Dallas project manager Steve Devries - were the only software company representatives present at the conference.

Chief Kay is now mounting accusations of his own. He sugg ested to investigators that political pressure forced the committee to reconsider a local Dallas company, Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) that had been eliminated from the short list.

?The committee was told that third vendor would be added back to the ?short list. This vendor was ACS, whose national headquarters happened to be in Dallas,? Chief Kay wrote. ?Why did someone above us add them back after they have been eliminated by the committee? During their weeklong demonstration, they had both breakfast and lunch catered for everyone involved.?

ACS did not make the final cut to two. In February, the selection committee made up of police, fire and city technical staff decided a virtual dead heat between Tritech and North Carolina-based InterAct. Scoring records show that Chief Kay and a department subordinate who also served on the committee gave Tritech scores so high they overcame the scores of all five of the other committee members, who preferred InterAct.

Chief Kay?s scores for InterAct were the lowest of the seven committee members. Tritech won by two points.

For unknown reasons, the first reports about Chief Kay?s March dinner with Tritech officials ? and his removal from the committee because of ethics issues - did not result in a formal internal affairs investigation for more than two months, only registering in public records on May 25, just two weeks prior to the city council vote. CBS-11?s report after the council vote showed that none of the council members had been informed of the ethics questions swirling around the selection committee and particularly Chief Kay?s swing vote scores for Tritech.

?All of our questions are pretty much answered,? said Councilwoman Maxine Thornton-Reese just prior to the unanimous council vote June 8.

Now, the investigative report?s findings may leave a tainting cloud of uncertainty over the validity of Kay?s swing vote, and therefore the entire 911 contract evaluation process.

Council member Gary Griffith, who is als o vice chairman of the public safety committee, told CBS-11 he would have wanted to know about any ethics questions prior to voting for it.

?I would like to have known,? he said. ?If in fact there were parts that said it might have impacted the results we might have wanted to stop and again take corrective action at that point in time.?

Also following the CBS-11 report, top city officials ordered the investigation to be broadened far beyond Chief Kay to as many as nine people associated with the selection process, among them police officials and city technical staff. Emerging from interviews with these employees was the revelation that several of the 911 contract prospective vendors offered meals that were accepted. ACS, for instance, ordered catered breakfasts and lunches for the group during its presentations.

Investigators zeroed in on allegations that employees associated with the 911 vendor selection process accepted off-duty meals from three different prospective companies while traveling to inspect their wares. The employees acknowledged taking unauthorized off-hours meals from Tritech in San Diego, ACS in Boston and from InterAct in Atlanta.

But investigators exonerated employees who accepted those off-duty meals for three reasons, according to the report: Many employees dined at the events together, reducing the likelihood of improper relationship-building. The meals probably would have been authorized if a request had been made to Dallas. And, the employees took one meal from all three vendors, spreading their contact equally among competing vendors.

Investigators took a special interest in a Nov. 19, 2004 meal at a posh steak restaurant in La Hoya, California during a business trip attended by all of the Dallas committee members, records show. The meal was paid for by Tritech.

Everyone who attended the dinner told investigators they were not influenced in any way.

Chief Kay, who was also exonerated of any wrongdoing connected with the Nov. 19 meal, said the meal was just business.

?I never intended to do anything wrong. I have always attempted to serve the Department with integrity and honor,? he said. ?During the evaluation of the various vendors I made every effort to be objective and fair.?

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