A Quincy Tale: Crony Capitalism in Local Government
by Bob GoughThe Quincy (Ill.)City Council–with the support of all GOP Alderman–decided to reward a large contributor to Quincy Mayor John Spring’s campaign with a $6.69 million contract with the city.
US Senator Durbin Laughing with the Local Machine About the Spoils
City officials used an RFP process that pretty much guaranteed the company was going to keep doing business as usual with the city.
A committee of appointed city officals and a paid consultant recommended approval with Environmental Management Corporation (EMC), O’Fallon, MO, for the management of the city’s waste water treatment plant and biosolid disposal operations based upon a five-year contract.
EMC’s contract calls for the city to pay management fees of $717,000 in year one, $734,925 in year two, $753,298 in year three, $772,131 in year four and $791,434 in year five. The city’s cost for its own eight employees during that same period is $2,873,019 in salaries and up to $141,921 in overtime for a five-year total of $6,693,727.
A proposal EMC submitted using all of its own employees would have cost the city $7.1 million.
So, yes, the city is paying a private company about $750,000 a year over the next five years to manage public employees.
A contract with EMC running waste water operations and another company, Synagro, handling sludge removal would have cost the city $6,716,505, but the members of the Proposal Review Committee said they preferred having one company handle both operations.
Quincy Director of Administrative Services Gary Sparks, Comptroller Ann Scott, Director of Utilities David Kent and Jeff Conte, a water/wastewater systems consultant who works for Klingner and Associates of Quincy, a private provider with its own city contracts, make up the committee which recommended the proposal.
Sparks says the city has negoiated a lower rate for the services, saving $1 million over the next five years compared to what the city was previously paying EMC. The city had 19 public employees at this facility a few short years ago and now feels it can get by with eight public employees.
So was EMC previously overcharging the city?
According to the city’s request for proposal (RFP), the mayor and the City Council will be the “final authority” on all matters pertaining to the contract.
As part of EMC’s contract proposal, it included a letter of recommendation from Quincy Mayor John Spring as a reference to assist in garnering a new contract with the City of Quincy. Click the link to see the campaign contributions EMC has given to Spring.
Let that sink in. The sitting Mayor, a recipient of campaign donations, was able to provide a “letter of recommendation” to extend the city contract.
EMC’s proposal also included a letter from Conte, a member of the proposal review committee, to EMC regarding a tour of the facility he was given in 2005.
“…the facility is in need of substantial improvements and repairs…,” Conte writes. “I hope that Klingner & Associates, P.C. can work together with EMC and the city to see this through.”
The city is also paying Klingner about $4,000 for Conte’s work on the committee.
Klingner & Associates gets a great deal of no-bid work from the city and is currently cashing large City of Quincy checks for work on a proposed multi-million dollar hydroelectric plant at Lock and Dam 21 on the Mississippi River.
And before you ask, yes, Klingner boss Mike Klingner also ponies up to the Spring campaign fund.
But, as Paul Harvey would say…here’s the rest of the story. The Quincy City Council is split evenly between Democrats and the GOP. One of the Democrat councilman was absent on the night of the vote, meaning the GOP members could have killed this corrupt bargain. Instead, they all voted for it. Go along, get along.
No, the GOP still doesn’t get what is happening in America.
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Via email to: Rep. Hall, Appointed Sen. for NY, Sen. Schumer, Pres. Obama
Washington DC
January 20, 2008
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Yertle:
I am concerned that the manner in which the federal government is operating is eerily like how the Krupps munitions factory was still billing the Nazi’s – after Hitler committed suicide. Benjamin Franklin once remarked that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, and expecting different results. The congress has passed bailouts, and rescues, and soon a, stimulus package, all in an empty effort to save the Republic from the financial malfeasance of governments small and large. If they failed to work in the past what reason do you believe that they will work in the future? It appears to me that the solution is obvious. Forgetting financial reality for a moment. In a given year the US economy generates 10 to 15 trillion dollars. I say why wait for the year to pass. Next time all of you are at your respective posts pass a bill to print $12.5 Trillion and disperse it. At least that way we will all know who is getting the money.
Obviously, however enticing, this idea is absurd. Is it any more so than one insolvent institution, the US Government ($2 Trillion running deficit, $12 Trillion in debt), giving another insolvent institution, US Banks(Bloomberg news service reports $4-$5 Trillion required to re-capitalize them, at the current rate of loss), money it does not have anything to back it other than more debt, and a beaten up taxpayer? With ink so fresh on the bonds that the Communist Chinese government has yet to collect the interest on it? I fail to see the wisdom in how creating a smaller hole in one spot, and a bigger hole in another will ever do any of us any good. This philosophy has not worked in the past and it will not work in the future. The evil economic stew we are cooking has been brewed before, and it will taste just as bitter this time.
When Ronald Reagan took the reigns of this nation in 1981 we were in far worse shape than we are in today, a large portion of our military qualified for poverty assistance, a business owner could not breathe without the governments permission, inflation was sky high, unemployment at double digits. Unless we do the right thing now we will be there again, rapidly. Our economic problems today are manufactured by our own fiscal malfeasance – there is no shortage of food, energy, labor, or capital. What we have too much of is the heavy hand of government deciding who gets what, how much, and when via a complex set of regulations and tax policy. President Reagan, to the largest extent possible, ended that madness, and while the 80’s were no picnic, that decade created 20,000,000 new jobs, strengthened this nation so we could carry on in the future, and we brought most of the world with us as a lucky strike extra. The economic lesson of the 80’s is that freedom and economic liberty are viral, and the only antidote for it is big government – this is something we have forgotten or chosen to ignore. Up to now President Obamas rhetoric has been the antithesis of this pro growth philosophy. Mr. Obama thinks that a combination of targeted tax cuts, welfare, and government make work projects are the cure for our ills. To do this Mr. Obama will need more bureaucrats, and add more legal and fiscal complexity to meet his goals. I reject this economic cure and its implementation. Remember, what the government gives to one it must take from another. How does the government know that the capital or wealth it is redistributing will not be used for a much wiser purpose then the one it has ordained? It doesn’t. Like an alcoholic in a bar, the government drinks without accountability, and spends the monthly mortgage payment on whiskey without forethought, and hurts everyone it claims to care about. Remember these thoughts as you create the next seemingly free government give away; someone has to pay for it, that someone will be our children, their payment will either be in gold or blood.
This insanity of printing, borrowing, and misallocation of capital must stop. No country on earth has ever borrowed, spent or taxed it’s way to recovery, let alone prosperity. War and Depression? Absolutely. If this economic cancer is allowed to metastasize we will once again be pushed as a nation into a choice of not whether we should or should not do something, but whether or not we can. The “stimulus package” legislation all of you are considering is nothing more than economic suicide.
Respectfully,
Via email to: Rep. Hall, Appointed Sen. for NY, Sen. Schumer, Pres. Obama
Washington DC
January 20, 2008
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Yertle:
I am concerned that the manner in which the federal government is operating is eerily like how the Krupps munitions factory was still billing the Nazi’s – after Hitler committed suicide. Benjamin Franklin once remarked that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, and expecting different results. The congress has passed bailouts, and rescues, and soon a, stimulus package, all in an empty effort to save the Republic from the financial malfeasance of governments small and large. If they failed to work in the past what reason do you believe that they will work in the future? It appears to me that the solution is obvious. Forgetting financial reality for a moment. In a given year the US economy generates 10 to 15 trillion dollars. I say why wait for the year to pass. Next time all of you are at your respective posts pass a bill to print $12.5 Trillion and disperse it. At least that way we will all know who is getting the money.
Obviously, however enticing, this idea is absurd. Is it any more so than one insolvent institution, the US Government ($2 Trillion running deficit, $12 Trillion in debt), giving another insolvent institution, US Banks(Bloomberg news service reports $4-$5 Trillion required to re-capitalize them, at the current rate of loss), money it does not have anything to back it other than more debt, and a beaten up taxpayer? With ink so fresh on the bonds that the Communist Chinese government has yet to collect the interest on it? I fail to see the wisdom in how creating a smaller hole in one spot, and a bigger hole in another will ever do any of us any good. This philosophy has not worked in the past and it will not work in the future. The evil economic stew we are cooking has been brewed before, and it will taste just as bitter this time.
When Ronald Reagan took the reigns of this nation in 1981 we were in far worse shape than we are in today, a large portion of our military qualified for poverty assistance, a business owner could not breathe without the governments permission, inflation was sky high, unemployment at double digits. Unless we do the right thing now we will be there again, rapidly. Our economic problems today are manufactured by our own fiscal malfeasance – there is no shortage of food, energy, labor, or capital. What we have too much of is the heavy hand of government deciding who gets what, how much, and when via a complex set of regulations and tax policy. President Reagan, to the largest extent possible, ended that madness, and while the 80’s were no picnic, that decade created 20,000,000 new jobs, strengthened this nation so we could carry on in the future, and we brought most of the world with us as a lucky strike extra. The economic lesson of the 80’s is that freedom and economic liberty are viral, and the only antidote for it is big government – this is something we have forgotten or chosen to ignore. Up to now President Obamas rhetoric has been the antithesis of this pro growth philosophy. Mr. Obama thinks that a combination of targeted tax cuts, welfare, and government make work projects are the cure for our ills. To do this Mr. Obama will need more bureaucrats, and add more legal and fiscal complexity to meet his goals. I reject this economic cure and its implementation. Remember, what the government gives to one it must take from another. How does the government know that the capital or wealth it is redistributing will not be used for a much wiser purpose then the one it has ordained? It doesn’t. Like an alcoholic in a bar, the government drinks without accountability, and spends the monthly mortgage payment on whiskey without forethought, and hurts everyone it claims to care about. Remember these thoughts as you create the next seemingly free government give away; someone has to pay for it, that someone will be our children, their payment will either be in gold or blood.
This insanity of printing, borrowing, and misallocation of capital must stop. No country on earth has ever borrowed, spent or taxed it’s way to recovery, let alone prosperity. War and Depression? Absolutely. If this economic cancer is allowed to metastasize we will once again be pushed as a nation into a choice of not whether we should or should not do something, but whether or not we can. The “stimulus package” legislation all of you are considering is nothing more than economic suicide.
Respectfully,
Please take down one of my letters – I'm trying to fight for freedom and liberty, eat lunch, and work, and watch rush on the ditto cam.
Oh poor Illinois. You have become the midway at a faltering carnival. Your games are as old as the circus has been around. Your employees smell like cabbage, and cannot guess a correct age or weight. Your management is doing blow in the back of a Winnebago behind the tilt-o-whirl with the bearded woman. And the creditors are going to start knocking before long…
To the the people of Illinois, I do believe it's time to close the carnival, and revoke their permit…!
Don't feel bad. I somtimes wonder how I ever manage to get anything done at work. And I blame it all on Andrew Breitbart…Thanks Mr. Breitbart! =)
Maybe cause we are looking for the wrong hat…?
http://rlv.zcache.com/communist_symbol_hat-p14816...
What do you bet that it smells infinitely better down at the sewage plant than it does in Quincy's City Hall?
omg. real journalism.
This is a story about petty corruption and kick backs. not the he/said she said, bs we get from the msm.
This kind of thing is what good I think will come from Obama's Pres–ency.
A good spotlight on Illinois and how corrupt it really is, is now being seen by the entire country at the National level.
Don't anyone be fooled that isn't going on in your own community.
And no, the GOP still hasn't caught on.
[...] Follow this link: » A Quincy Tale: Crony Capitalism in Local Government – Big Government [...]
In my community, Beacon, New York, the former NY Governor, Pataki, trumpeted the creation of a "world class" center for research on rivers and estuaries. He then named John Cronin to be head. John Cronin does not have a single college degree. John Cronin has never published a single research paper. The only qualification I found for John Cronin is that he was reported to be a "friend" of Pataki. John Cronin did write a book with one of the Kennedys about pollution of the Hudson River. John Cronin used to be the "Hudson Riverkeeper", which meant he toodled around looking for polluters. A nice conspiracy theory is that John Cronin agreed to hush up about a major Hudson River polluter who had some tie to Pataki, in exchange for being named head of the research center.
The real kicker is, a couple of years ago, the center named themselves a private organization, severing all ties to the state of New York. Several million dollars of taxpayer money just magically became private money. So nice to be in the most corrupt state in the country! I can't get a single politician to request that the state attorney general conduct an investigation. But I guess that is expected, since all NY politicians are corrupt.
agreed!
"all NY politicians are corrupt"
No need to limit this observation to New York.
Expensive baby sitters.
That's just Quincy, Ill. Where else is this kind of stuff going on in America? Probably more little towns and burghs than anyone knows (and big cities). Funny how this happens in plain sight yet it's still tough to find "Waldo"…
The Illinois GOP is the nation's most dysfunctional political party, chock full of corruption, liberalism, and complacency. I hope the Dems sweep Illinois so the GOP has an excuse to come in and rid itself of the Dillards and Ryans and McKennans and Kirks.
As usual an informative post, thanks.
Kirk is not a fiscal free spender. He is not conservative on social issues. There is a difference.
You are correct that many in the Illinois GOP played the game. Peter Fitzgerald left the state
Turban Durbin…now there is one BIG chunk of excrement. I guess the fine citizens of Illinois either like being told what to do and when to do it, via Mr. Progressive Durbin, or they have a major problem with coprophilia
I always learn something new
Decent Post! Do you take care if person includes out your public-spirited knowledge on your posting article, but zero take part in a remark. In fact, most people aren
Thank you for your post. It has given me quite a bit to think about. Thank you again!
[...] A Quincy Tale: Crony Capitalism in Local Government – Big GovernmentFeb 17, 2010 … A Quincy Tale: Crony Capitalism in Local Government … from the city and is currently cashing large City of Quincy checks for work on a … [...]
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