San Diego County has spiked plans to hire a contractor to help ready local infrastructure for disasters, after The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the only company bidding for the work was being pushed by a lobbyist who had just left a job as the county’s top emergency services official.
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Infrastructure Documentation Solutions, a Nebraska-based firm, bid late last year on a $2.5 million contract to photograph county infrastructure vulnerable to damage during a disaster.
Back in October, Republican Supervisor Joel Anderson had asked his colleagues to bypass the county’s open bidding process and award the contract directly to the company.
He argued it was vital to move quickly, pointing to a new federal law that encourages governments to have images of their infrastructure to maximize reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency if it’s damaged in disasters.
But supervisors balked at awarding a no-bid contract to an little-known, out-of-state company and decided to send the work to a competitive bidding process.
Earlier this year, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Infrastructure Documentation Solutions was being represented before the county by a just-departed staffer.
Jeff Toney, the county’s former director of emergency services, left county government last year for a lobbying job with Southwest Strategies and within months was retained by the company to lobby supervisors to award a contract to the company.
On June 23, two days after the Union-Tribune report, county procurement officials cancelled the contracting process entirely.
Sarah Sweeney, a county spokesperson, did not answer questions about why the contract was cancelled but said procurement officials had met four times this year to review the lone bid.
There has been no ethics investigation into the contract or how it was developed, she said.
Last month, supervisors voted to draft new ethics rules to ban recent former county officials from lobbying their former employer for two years after they have left the county.
Jason Feldhaus, the founder and CEO of Infrastructure Documentation Solutions, did not respond to a request for comment. Anderson declined to comment, and Toney referred questions to county officials.
Emails obtained by the Union-Tribune through a records request show that Anderson’s staff coordinated with Toney and Feldhaus as the supervisor introduced legislation to award the company a no-bid contract.
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Anderson’s legislation described the company as “uniquely qualified to provide these services.”
Emails between them show that Feldhaus was asked to provide Anderson’s staff a list of local governments with which his company had previously contracted. The company did not provide any.
“Can you also provide a complete list of jurisdictions that IDS worked with so that we have it handy?” Dallin Young, Anderson’s director of policy, emailed Feldhaus on Oct. 17.
Feldhaus replied “not sure I understand” and instead sent a list of government agencies largely based in Nebraska that he said had advised him as he was developing his company.
“This is perfect. Thanks!” Young replied.
The emails were released to the Union-Tribune in July, days after its report on Toney’s lobbying but eight months after it first filed a records request.
Anderson in recent months has treated transparency in county contracting as a top issue, and in November, he successfully pushed to create a special subcommittee to review county contracting practices.
He has billed the panel, which consists of himself and Democratic Supervisor Paloma Aguirre, as intending to “carefully review and evaluate all existing county contracts to find savings and ensure that taxpayer dollars are being used efficiently.”
So far, the subcommittee has met three times. Its meetings have largely focused on hearing presentations from county officials on contracting practices and how to improve them.
Other recent county ethics and transparency reforms have targeted the kind of revolving-door lobbying that helped lead to the proposed contract with Infrastructure Documentation Solutions.
Last month, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed legislation from Chair Terra Lawson-Remer to ban all outgoing county employees and officials from lobbying their former employer for a two-year “cooling-off period.”
Had such a ban been in place last year, Toney — at the time only about six months removed from his county job — would have been barred from working with Anderson’s office on developing the legislation awarding a contract to his client.
County staff are currently drafting options for new lobbying rules. A ban that applies retroactively is on the table, said Beth Willon, a spokesperson for Lawson-Remer.
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