Tuesday the McHenry County Board is scheduled to pass a new purchasing ordinance.
The issue caught my attention when I heard that lots and lots of stuff was being bought without purchase orders.
So, I filed a Freedom of Information request to find out the extent of the through the back door purchases.
The amount of information I requested–a year’s worth–was too much to cope with, according to the Assistant State’s Attorney, Brandy Quance, who called me.
So I cut down my request, which is summarized in County Auditor Pam Palmer’s reply below:
How Pam Palmer characterized by slimmed down Freedom of Information request concerning items bought without
purchase orders.
To my astonishment, the reply amounted to fifty-six pages.
Below you see the first five pages. I note that some items that we agreed to exclude, e.g., telephone bills, are in the list. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Here is Palmer’s accompanying letter:
County Board, Eh?
These people are spending our money like there’s no tomorrow.
In order for major organizations with wide property holdings and huge public/private responsibilities to function even remotely efficiently a certain level/type of purchasing must be allowed without a cumbersome paperwork /approval process.
These pages show a minuscule percentage of purchases pass without red tape or immediate oversight.
This is generally not a concern. In the specific public officials have used this loophole to purchase material for personal home improvements, gasoline for personal cars, gifts for friends, groceries for personal use, payment in kind for personal services, etc..
Keep digging.
There’s nothing untoward yet.
It gets fun when you find the horror show behavior of truly corrupt individuals.
It’s better than Swordfish fishing when they fight to get off the line.