Kansas City News Blog

The black eyes keep coming for the Kansas City, Kansas, Board of Public Utilities. Yesterday, a legislative audit was released showing that the utility company failed to seek competitive bids for 21 of 25 contracts valued at more than $50,000.

I'd heard for a couple of years that the BPU wasn't bidding contracts. Finally, a legislative audit report from Tom Wiss and a special master's report proved it. The reports were commissioned after the indictments of the BPU's Chief Administrative Officer Marc Conklin and long-time attorney Rod Turner. Wyandotte County prosecutors allege that Turner knowingly submitted phony bills, which Conklin approved. They say Conklin knew the bills were fake.

Even though the reports were commissioned because of the indictments, the reports don't examine the culture that caused the alleged thefts.

So what did Wiss find? A whole lot.

• The BPU violated its purchasing policy.
• Four contracts worth more than $50,000 were awarded to former BPU employees. Three of the contracts don't have expiration dates.
• The BPU also doesn't have a committee for reviewing bids.
• Contracts don't exist on a consistent basis. No contracts for legal services exist. No contract existed for a surveying company paid $151,000 for a nine-month job that was never reviewed. No contract exists for a roofing contractor hired for a $268,000 job.
• 11 contracts -- "mostly for consulting and temporary staffing services" -- do not have expiration dates.
• Some contracts have existed for several years without ever being rebid. Four contracts were made before 2000 and have never been rebid. One dates back to 1993.
• Bid notices for items over $50,000 were rarely advertised in the local newspaper.
• Expired contracts are still being honored.
• In several instances, there's a lack of supporting documentation for payments.
• Use of procurement cards extends beyond the program's objectives.

Wiss and special master George Turner's 19 recommendations included having the BPU aggressively rebid all contracts, advertise professional service contracts, keep the BPU's Ethics Commission running and closely monitor procurement card usage. Both stressed that the utility is already making changes.

After the meeting, Wiss and George Turner deflected questions about the environment allowed under Conklin and Rod Turner (the two Turners are not related).

"I have no idea," Wiss said when asked whether the BPU's environment was conducive to theft.

"No comment to the lawsuit," George Turner said.

Wiss added that he didn't look at any documents related to Conklin or Rod Turner.

"We didn't look to the environment as to how they got to where they were," Wiss said. "We were looking to what the status of what they were at the time of our audit."

I thought that was the purpose of the audit -- to identify how the alleged thefts occurred and to change the BPU's policies to prevent that from happening.

I asked Wiss if he outlined in his report which contracts weren't bid on.

"No. The contract names are not in the report itself," Wiss said. "They are in our working papers."

Is there a way to get those names? I asked.

"Through open records requests those records are available," Wiss said.

The Unified Government and the BPU talk about transparency, so why not release them now? They're going to come out sooner or later. Why drag it out?

Mayor Joe Reardon said he wants time to study the report.

"However, it appears to me that the Unified Government will be in the position, based on the reports presented, to scrutinize the BPU business practices and policies based on the facts and not anecdotal stories," Reardon said in a prepared statement. "I expect the BPU Board will begin immediately to implement the recommendations."

Reardon told the BPU to present a "responsive report" to the UG Board on March 5.