Quillin e-mails show try to bypass county procedures
Posted on Sunday, October 14, 2007
Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley found no evidence that Pulaski County’s purchase of a financial software system was influenced by former Comptroller Ron Quillin’s affair with the software company’s director of client services.
A committee of county employees, including Quillin, reviewed the bids and selected St. Louis-based Government e-Management Solutions to supply software, servers and support in December 2003, nearly two years before Quillin’s affair with Cheryl Zeier began. The GEMS contract has cost $ 1 million to date.
But in 2006, Quillin sought to subvert formal bidding laws as he pushed — ultimately unsuccessfully — for $ 80, 336 worth of software and upgrades the county lacked the infrastructure to use.
The attempt to bypass county bid procedures is revealed in emails Quillin exchanged with Zeier that the Democrat-Gazette sought under the Freedom of Information Act, some of which Pulaski County fought to keep private. The state Supreme Court ruled Oct. 4 that all the e-mails, including a handful that were sexually explicit, were public records because they constituted “a record of the performance or lack of performance of official functions.”
The events transpired in this sequence:
On June 14, 2006, Quillin emailed Zeier, about “long-range planning” for the county’s computer system. The county didn’t fight to keep this e-mail private.
“Hey Darlin !” Quillin wrote. He explained that he wanted to “establish some long range plans for the implementation of other GEMS modules / Harris products that would be beneficial to Pulaski County.”
Quillin mentioned Hyland OnBase, software that allows organizations to manage certain records, including invoices, and to automate some business processes. The software is not a GEMS product.
“As I stated to you last week I want the contract through GEMS so that I can show it as an enhancement rather than as a separate product which would require competitive bidding,” he wrote.
The e-mails released by Pulaski County do not include an e-mail response from Zeier, if there was one.
Several months later, OnBase came up again at a meeting that included Zeier, assistant comptroller Stephanie Creed and Quillin, who had been promoted by then to director of administrative services.
Creed said that when she asked specific questions about the price, she didn’t get a straight answer.
Creed said she explained the rules for competitive bidding, which required the county to seek bids for anything over $ 15, 000.
“We have to go out to bid,” she said she told the group.
From then on, Creed said, Quillin did not include her in any discussions regarding On-Base.
Quillin left his county post in April for a job in what is now the State Department of Human Services.
Afterward, the county’s information technology director told County Comptroller Mike Hutchens that the county did not have the infrastructure necessary to support OnBase, and that the software wasn’t needed, Hutchens said.
Creed then sent Quillin an e- mail asking whether the county had a contract with GEMS for the OnBase software. She also sent an e-mail to Zeier.
In response, Zeier told Creed two county purchase orders — one for $ 43, 557. 71 and one for $ 36, 778. 29 — had been issued months earlier and they were the contract for purchasing and installing OnBase.
The project, Zeier wrote in a May 22 e-mail, was on hold until another system was installed, a job she thought was nearing completion.
Creed wrote Zeier that the purchase orders were not standins for an actual contract and noted that the county does not use purchase orders for “professional services.”
Zeier forwarded the exchange to Quillin’s new work e-mail at the state Medicaid offices. “BS !!!,” Quillin wrote Zeier two minutes after receiving the exchange. “How many po’s [purchase orders ] have been issued to GEMS over the last 2 years and it was all related to professional services....”
Meanwhile, Zeier sent Creed an e-mail saying that the On-Base purchase “encompasses more than just professional services as it is license fees, and if memory [serves ], hardware. This process also negated the need to go [out ] for bid and also fell into alignment with what the courts are using.” Creed had asked Zeier to send copies of the purchase orders. When Zeier failed to do so by May 30, Creed sent her an e-mail that said, “Pulaski County is no longer interested. Best regards.” Thirty minutes later, Zeier wrote from Dallas — where she was on a secret getaway with Quillin — and promised to send copies of the purchase orders when she returned to St. Louis.
With all the e-mails going around, Zeier called Quillin once they had returned and asked if he knew what was going on with the software contract.
“He’d given me the indication that he was hearing... buzz about people talking bad about how he handled [OnBase ] not following procedures,” she later told a Pulaski County sheriff’s detective investigating Quillin’s theft of $ 42, 954 in county funds to finance his affair.
Zeier also told the investigator she had included a $ 6, 000 management fee for her company as part of the OnBase deal.
On Friday, June 1, Zeier sent to the county via e-mail the signed purchase orders. But county officials already had decided against moving forward with the purchase.
The only person in county government who can sign off on a contract is County Judge F. G. “Buddy” Villines, and that’s only after it is reviewed by several other departments, said County Attorney Karla Burnett.
“[Ron ] did not have that kind of power here,” Burnett explained, adding that the judge would never have approved the purchase orders.
Zeier, who still works for GEMS but not with Pulaski County, did not return the newspaper’s e-mail and telephone messages seeking comment. Her cell phone has been disconnected. Through her attorney, Blake Hendrix, Zeier declined to discuss her relationship with Quillin because she believes it is a private matter. As for questions about her business dealings, Hendrix said, “She’s going to defer to her superiors on any corporate matters.”
Two messages left at the company’s headquarters seeking comment also were not returned.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
