Some Phila. Sheriff's Office contracts circumvented system

Philadelphia Sheriff Jewell Williams, elected in 2011 on promises of openness and accountability, has handed out 38 contracts, some to his political donors, without competitive bidding or other safeguards required by the City Charter.

In two years, records show, the Sheriff's Office has signed contracts worth $1.2 million without formal bidding or city Finance and Law Department approval. Payments have come out of proceeds from one of the office's main duties: sheriff's sales.

The charter says any contract over $32,000 - a limit adjusted for inflation every five years - must be competitively bid. Contracts under $32,000 must be for one-time services and can't be renewed. City computers are even programmed to stop any contract above $32,000 from being issued without formal bids.

But the sheriff's contracts and renewals aren't sent through the city's electronic filters.

Williams points out that "the sheriff is not mentioned once" in the charter. He says its rules are overridden by a 2003 court order aimed at fixing a previous sheriff's financial mess.

The Nutter administration disputes that. "The charter applies," Deputy Mayor Everett Gillison said last week.

After The Inquirer raised questions about the contracts, Williams met Thursday with Nutter aides - and issued a statement saying he had now agreed to follow the city's procurement process.

"After meeting with the administration, the Sheriff's Office has agreed that revenues and expenditures will be submitted consistent with all applicable financial rules," Williams said.

His office made a similar commitment in 2012.

The Inquirer reviewed two years of invoices and payments made on 13 of the contracts and found that Williams' office paid six vendors - hired for a "security analysis," public relations, and other services - more than the $32,000 charter limit. Payments on the 13 contracts totaled more than $500,000.

Among the contractors:

AK Consulting, paid $92,500 over two years to do a "security analysis" of the sheriff's South Broad Street headquarters and write a training manual. AK's owner, Alan Kurtz, who briefly ran for sheriff before the 2011 Democratic primary, has given $750 to Williams' campaign fund in the last two years.

Another Kurtz company, A. Norman Consulting, which had a $15,000 contract to analyze "procedures of retention and distribution of funds and assets that remain from sheriff's sales." Payments for that work have totaled $22,500, records show.

Airika Brunson, who had two public-relations contracts, for $29,000 each, during the fiscal year that ended June 30. Invoices show she was paid a total of $40,000.

Joshua Wigfall, whose $15,000 contract is for "clerical duties assigned to him in the Sheriff's Civil Enforcement Unit." He has been paid more than $41,000 over the duration of his contract, which was renewed three times, records show. He gave $125 to Williams' campaign fund last year.

Leonard Heard, hired to give advice "on educational and academic issues relevant to the sheriff's commitment to public education and community involvement." Though his contract was within the charter's $32,000 limit for one fiscal year, records show he was paid $60,000 in a seven-month span. He gave $250 to Williams' 2011 campaign.

Williams' office has not answered a Sept. 3 Inquirer request to review several contractors' work, such as Heard's advice and Kurtz's training manual.

The office has a taxpayer-funded $18.4 million budget and 289 employees. Its main duties are transporting prisoners, safeguarding courtrooms, and overseeing sheriff's sales of delinquent or foreclosed properties.

In decades past, audit after audit found discrepancies in sheriff's sales. A judge's 2003 consent order required the office to pay overtime or hire extra people to meet state-mandated deadlines - such as the recording of deeds within 40 days of sheriff's sales settlements. That seemingly simple chore had been taking up to a year.

Williams vowed to let fresh air into the office when he was elected in 2011. "We campaigned on transparency and open records," he said in his victory speech. "We are now going to work very hard to keep those promises."

Indeed, Gillison credits Williams with having moved the office "light-years ahead." But he also takes exception to Williams' view of the City Charter.

The sheriff contends the 2003 court order overrode the charter and let him hire people on the side.

"While we try to conform to city standards and procedures . . . we are not always able to fully duplicate because of the [2003] order," Ben Hayllar, the sheriff's chief finance officer and a former city finance director, said in an e-mail.

Not so, says now-retired Common Pleas Court Judge Eugene Cohen. His 2003 order "was never intended to circumvent the procurement process," Cohen said in an interview last week.

After Thursday's meeting, Williams said the administration had agreed to fund new hires to "replace the independent contract employees now working with the sheriff." (Mayor Nutter's spokesman, Mark McDonald, said the amount of that funding was yet to be determined.)

The pledge Williams made in return, to follow spending rules, echoes his 2012 agreement to clear all contracts with the city's Finance and Law Departments - the better to prevent controversies like those that clouded the 22-year tenure of his predecessor, John Green.

That 2012 agreement has yet to bring results.

Asked when the administration might push the sheriff to comply, Gillison said: "That's a good question. I'm not going to answer that one."

The three-page 2012 agreement has no enforcement or penalty language - and it's not clear who would enforce it.

"If it's not criminal, there's no kind of administrative oversight," Amy Kurland, the city inspector general, said. "There is no investigative agency out there that investigates violation of the City Charter and city code."

Even her office is arguably temporary. Created by a 1984 executive order, it has watchdog oversight only of the administrative branch of the government. A bill to make it permanent and expand its reach to all city offices, including the sheriff's, has languished in City Council.

City Controller Alan Butkovitz, who faults both the administration and sheriff's office for not following through on the 2012 agreement, said issuing contracts without using the city's software makes costs harder to monitor.

"If they were going through the city's invoice system, it would come through here and the payments would be stopped," Butkovitz said when told what the invoices showed. "There is no shut-off mechanism."

Along with invoices and payments on 13 sheriff's contracts, The Inquirer reviewed 25 other contracts Williams' office had issued since July 1, 2013. Six were with people who have been Williams' campaign donors, records show.

Each contract consisted of a page containing a brief description of duties and a pay rate. How much those vendors were paid could not be learned - those payments, too, were outside the city's system.