Memo Shows DAS Culture of Obstructing Competitive Bidding.

Hostility to competitive bidding in the Lamont administration was documented in a December Department of Administrative Services (DAS) internal memorandum.

DAS project manager Lisa Humble wrote a detailed memo about a nine-minute December 8, 2021 telephone conversation with Mike Sanders, a member of the Hazardous Materials Expertise staff at DAS. Humble was relaying a request from Keith Epstein, Vice President of Infrastructure, Planning & Real Estate at the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU). Epstein was seeking three bids for the Haz-Mat demolition and remediation work at Norwalk Community College.

Sanders was not interested in providing more thanone bid—-from DAS favorite Asbestos Abatement and Insulation Services (AAIS). Sanders, according to Humble’s memorandum, said there was no need to obtain more bids. No company would offer a better deal than AAIS.

AAIS, according to the CT Mirror’s Dave Altimari, received 70% of the state’s hazardous waste and asbestos abatement contracts from 2017. AAIS appeared on a 2016 list of companies that could be used for no-bid emergency contracts. Abuse of the list grew as it was regularly used for contacts that did not involve emergencies. No-bid contracts raised no alarms in the Lamont administration, which has been hostile to tradition notions of transparency.

Sanders died under “suspicious circumstances” of a drug overdose in Old Saybrook, according to police. nine days after his conversation with Humble.

Humble’s memorandum suggests that the failure to of DAS to engage in traditional competitive bidding had begun to engage the attention of DAS employees. A memo to a file, however, is unlikely to attract much notice. It does raise the question of why Josh Geballe, the DAS commissioner who resigned this month, seemed unaware of an alleged contract steering scheme in his department for the three years he was in charge.

Posted March 8, 2022.