Unbid $150,000 contract wasteful, agency decides

By ALAN JOHNSON

COLUMBUS — An unbid contract for more than $150,000 in copying and printing equipment signed by Anthony Gutierrez, the recently ousted administrator in Attorney General Marc Dann’s office, is wasteful and unnecessary, another state agency has determined.

The Ohio Department of Administrative Services, the business branch of state government, has held up payment and asked Dann’s office to return the equipment Gutierrez leased, which has been delivered but not installed.

“Overkill and waste,” DAS spokesman Ron Sylvester said about the Gutierrez contract, which would have given Dann’s office the largest printing and copying operation in state government at nearly double the annual cost.

Administrative services, as part of Gov. Ted Strickland’s administration, does not have veto power over purchases by Dann, a separately elected officeholder. However, DAS controls the bookkeeping system and placed an “administrative hold” on the contract, thus holding up payment.

The unbid contract with a Xerox Corp. office in Dublin was steered by Gutierrez, who was fired last week, and his boss, Edgar S. Simpson, chief of staff, who resigned rather than be fired. Both personnel actions came in response to an internal investigation that found that Dann’s administration fostered a “hostile work environment” that resulted in two sexual-harassment claims.

Asked about the unbid contract, spokesman Ted Hart said that the attorney general’s office is “planning to reconsider the whole issue before making any decisions.”

Sylvester said agency officials learned “some months ago that Gutierrez had this idea to build a printing empire on the 15th floor of the Rhodes Tower.”

The attorney general’s office prints about 4 million black and white copies a year, compared with 65 million copies by administrative services. Some of the attorney general’s printing and copying is contracted through DAS, amounting to about 10 percent of the agency’s overall business.

When the Strickland administration officials found out about the Gutierrez proposal, they asked for a meeting; Gutierrez and Simpson met with DAS officials this year. Sylvester said his office was concerned that the proposal “seemed to be wildly out of scale for their needs,” would result in DAS’ losing business, and might trigger the need to charge other customers more.

The Gutierrez proposal included leasing a $270,000 color copier and a separate black and white copier. The proposal would boost the annual cost for copying and printing at the attorney general’s office from the current $80,793 to $150,834.

Sylvester said competing companies complained that they did not get a chance to submit proposals for the contract Gutierrez signed with Xerox.

The attorney general’s office had been calling DAS twice a week to ask that the administrative hold be lifted so the equipment could be paid for and installed.

, Sylvester said. Since Gutierrez’s suspension a month ago, the calls stopped, he said.