Fiscal court, SRT chief at odds over fire restoration purchase process

Aug. 13—A paperwork error in efforts to rebuild the Somerset-Pulaski County Special Response Team's (SRT) fleet following the 2021 fire that destroyed their headquarters resulted in a contentious exchange at Tuesday's Pulaski County Fiscal Court meeting.

In April of last year, a fire damaged SRT's facility on Stigall Drive, taking out a number of the agency's vehicles and equipment. Since then, SRT — which handles hazardous materials, fuel leaks, and other potential major threats — has been working with county government to restore what was lost through insurance money.

On Tuesday, County Treasurer Joan Isaacs said that two purchase requisition forms came in to her office for equipping two different vehicles — a sprinter and a command truck for SRT.

Radio equipment is being put back inside the command truck, said SRT Chief Doug Baker, to facilitate communication with other agencies, and the sprinter van is also having communications and maintenance capabilities restored.

"The problem with them was, it came to my attention that these items had already been purchased, and had already been installed before a purchase order was requested," said Isaacs. "That is not how we do business, especially to the tune of $37,000."

Isaacs said that Emergency Management Director Josh Whitis didn't sign the forms, and she wouldn't do so either because proper procedure wasn't followed. She sought the court's opinion on how to move forward with the matter.

Fourth District Magistrate Mark Ranshaw spoke first, voicing his opinion that the county shouldn't pay the bill for this equipment, and that SRT has their own funds they can use to pay for it.

"The state has rules," responded Ranshaw. "One of those rules is, you must get a purchase agreement before we can cut a check, the county can cut a check. The process has always been known, it's always been out there, and it wasn't done. The said entity knows the process, and I just don't believe that it should be paid by the county because all it's going to do is hurt us in our audits, (Isaacs) as a treasurer, Steve (Kelley) as a county judge, because he has to sign off on all of those."

Baker was present, and said this sort of thing has occurred before during the process of their rebuild. He said he wasn't aware that a purchase order (PO) had to be placed before the purchase could be paid for.

"I knew it had to be before you could pay the bill, but it was my understanding once we purchase something, or we turned around and bought something or contracted out to have something fixed, that we got the PO once I got a total on it, and that's we did here," he said. "Neither one of those vehicles is (complete). ... I had no idea there was an issue until I talked to (Whitis). I didn't get a phone call from you."

Isaacs said she had talked to Whitis and that's why Baker didn't get a call. Baker said he wants to work with the fiscal court, and said that SRT is "just trying to come home" after the fire.

Still, Isaacs said that she and Baker went over these issues when the insurance process started, and said, "You should have been aware that purchase orders had to be acquired before" SRT took the steps that they did here. Baker said he might have "missed it," and that he knows now, "100 percent," but some other things with smaller price tags had been done the same way.

"Now that I know ... everything now before I even commit to anything, we will get a PO for," said Baker. "Those are the two largest items we had left."

Ranshaw asked Baker how long he'd been with SRT as a chief, and Baker responded by saying 23 years. Ranshaw then asked how long Baker had been submitting bills to the court; Baker said that until this latest effort to work with insurance on the rebuild, very few SRT bills had gone through fiscal court.

"Honestly, the fire coordinator took care of all that," said Baker. "We didn't do it. It went through them. So Mark, there's been very few. What we have here is a problem, and I will take my lick for it too. In communication, I've emailed Joan several times; sometimes I get a reply back, the majority of the time. Sometimes I've asked questions I haven't gotten back.

"We know now, and these are legitimate purchases to rebuild us to the point of where (it was a year and a half ago)," he added. "Now if we need to back off and re-do the PO system on those, I'm happy to do whatever we need to do."

"It's too late," responded Ranshaw. "If we don't have that PO before the bill comes in, then the auditors will kill us on the audit. Everybody knows, people have been complaining about the (county's audits). So now this is going to end up as a result on our audit if we pay this bill out."

"The only thing I can do or say as a chief of an emergency services organization, I'm a first responder, not a treasurer, and you're doing what you've got to do," said Baker. "But at the same time, I feel like trying to pull $30-something thousand from an organization that's only trying to do the right thing, there has to be a work-around. I would ask this court to do that."

Baker added that in his 23 years as SRT chief he's never had to deal with as much stress as he has during this rebuild.

"You talk about making mistakes, and I wasn't going to bring this up, but since you're ... I will, for some reason or another, this administration, according to my architect, did not sign the paperwork in time to get my steel in," said Baker. "I found out this week that delayed my reconstruction by seven weeks because my contractor pulled off. I think, according to the contractor that I saw, he said he put the court on notice of that.

"So we all make mistakes. I'm not blaming it on anyone. I made a mistake," he continued. "But I'm asking you, for everything that SRT has done — and Mark, I realize me and you differ on a lot of political opinions — but I don't think that my organization should be done this (way). There has to be a work-around because of a mistake I made. ... Those (trucks) are for public safety of Pulaski County citizens, and they're too needed."

He noted that when the local 911 center's ability to receive calls recently experienced problems due to a cable line being cut outside the county, if one of the vehicles was fixed, the issue probably could have been resolved in about 15 minutes.

"Here's my problem: I strive to make sure that this county follows the rules associated with the state," said Ranshaw. "It's hard for me to vote on something that goes against those rules. That's what I do. I understand where you're coming from, but it was explained to you early on what had to be done."

"I will differ with that, but we didn't go into a great lot of detail," responded Baker. "But as I said, now that I look back on it, Joan, I understand that."

Ranshaw started, "But now you're blaming it on ..." and Baker quickly responded, "No, no!"

Kelley, at this point, effectively offered to fall on the proverbial sword, as a judge-executive on the way out, with Marshall Todd having beaten him in last May's Primary Election. Kelley told Baker that if he'd followed proper protocol, he likely would have been given permission to proceed with the purchase.

"It's a needed purchase; it's a matter of public safety. We all know that," said Kelley. "It is a violation of the state's procurement laws; they request that we get a purchase order for everything, and have we done it in the past? Yes, certainly (this kind of thing) has been done in the past by mistake, and it's always up to the magistrates at that point to vote whether to pay it even though there's a mistake.

"I'll just say this — it's going to fall on the county judge-executive. ... Nobody ever blames the magistrates for a bad audit, that I know of," he continued. "So I'm on the way out. I would say for public safety, let's go ahead and pay this as a court, but you all ultimately will vote on that. That's my two cents."

First District Magistrate Jason Turpen suggested tabling the issue to talk it over with County Attorney Martin Hatfield, and Ranshaw said he thought the court should wait a couple of weeks and find out more.

Added Fifth District Magistrate Mike Strunk, "I hate not to pay it, but I know we need to do things the right way. They definitely need (those) trucks up and going, in my opinion."

Kelley asked if they could uninstall what's been done for the possibility of doing it again the officially correct way, but Isaacs said that wouldn't alleviate the problem.

"(The audit) is going to take the hit, regardless," she said.

Baker responded by apologizing for what happened, and the court voted to table the matter for two weeks.