This Orange County contract is at the heart of a conflict-of-interest claim. What to know

Orange County contracts awarded to an information technology firm have prompted several local and state officials to call for the resignation of a former county attorney, pointing to what they say is a conflict of interest.

State Sen. James Skoufis, D-Cornwall, is calling for the resignation of Langdon Chapman from his current position as Orange County’s human resources coordinator, accusing him of improperly awarding multiple county contracts to his brother-in-law’s IT consulting business, StarCIO.

“We are alleging that absolutely some laws were broken here,” Skoufis said Wednesday at a press conference outside the Orange County Office Building in Goshen. “This wasn’t some loophole that was taken advantage of.”

What claims have been made about former Orange County attorney

Chapman served as Orange County attorney from 2014 until the end of last year, when he stepped down to pursue his current appointment as the county’s human resources commissioner.

Skoufis has accused Chapman of stepping down from the role of county attorney in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety when the IT services contract was awarded to his brother-in-law, StarCIO founder Isaac Sacolick, the following month.

Skoufis pointed to three contracts awarded to StarCIO since the beginning of the year, collectively totaling $822,900 in funds already paid or set to be disbursed.

In each instance, Orange County officials classified the contracted work as “professional services,” Skoufis said, thereby waiving the state requirement that the county must solicit bids for the job from multiple agencies – a step in the contracting process known as request for proposals, or RFP.

State law requires no-bid contracts remain under $100,000, even if designated for professional services. But two of the three contracts at issue were approved for double that, at $218,400 and $208,000.

Was Orange County contract a conflict of interest? What NY law says

Rick Golden, who succeeded Chapman as county attorney following the latter’s appointment to his current role, claims the contracts were properly procured without any undue influence by Chapman.

“At this time Skoufis’ allegations are without any supporting facts,” Golden said in a Tuesday statement via email.

Under New York’s General Municipal Law, which governs the terms of most contract procurements, Orange County's contract with StarCIO may not meet the standards for prohibited interests between the two parties.

Unless the decision-making government employee directly has the power to “negotiate, prepare, authorize, or approve the contract,” according to Article 18, the situation likely does not rise to the level of conflict of interest, although some statutory exceptions may apply.

In a statement, Chapman pointed to the separation between IT and the department he oversees.

“This contract is in another department and is not something I have any control over or involvement with at Human Resources," Chapman said in a statement. “Skoufis can repeat his lies and call me names without any actual evidence, but his repetition doesn’t make his lies true.”

He went on to note that “Orange County Human Resources' role is to handle union collective bargaining, manage civil service, oversee employee relations, provide workforce development and some payroll responsibilities.”

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Claim: Delays kept contract in place

Orange County legislators claim additional steps were taken to ensure the contract remained with StarCIO.

The first contract, awarded in January, allocated $65,000 for 16 days of work spread across eight weeks. The work was billed as “transition services,” Skoufis said, “until the IT department can get its legs back underneath it.”

The Orange County Department of Information Technology was without a director following its recent re-establishment as a separate entity from the Department of General Services in August. Under the terms of the contract, Sacolick, as proprietor and sole employee of StarCIO, would serve in a transitory capacity.

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The departments were consolidated during Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus’ first term in office, but the measure was undone at the beginning of this year after Mike Anagnostakis, an Orange County legislator, claims county officials “rushed” the issue before the Ways and Means Committee, seeking a rewrite of the county charter to allow for their separation once again.

The contract also contained an auto-renewal provision and is now on its sixth iteration, 10 months after the transition back to two separate departments was initiated.

Per Orange County’s contract procurement policy, each contract requires the signature of the deputy county executive, Harold J. Porr III. Copies of the contracts obtained by Skoufis’ office showed Porr signed the first of the three contracts. The second was signed by Orange County Director of Operations Alicia D’Amico and the third was signed by Neuhaus.

Skoufis also claimed that the county attempted to backdate two other competing bids solicited by agencies comparable to StarCIO and offering a fraction of the cost. One of the competitors was not contacted by Orange County until eight months after the bid was awarded to StarCIO, he said, and the second had not been contacted by the county at all.

Two different business addresses were listed on documents submitted by StarCIO to the county. One was traced to a PO box in Larchmont, while the other is listed as Sacolick’s private residence in Tuckahoe, which Skoufis claimed went into foreclosure just days after the first contract was awarded, but Chapman said was paid off in full by 2021.

What's next

In addition to calling for Chapman’s immediate resignation and the termination of StarCIO contracts, legislators demanded an oversight hearing and outlined plans to draft a local law to prevent such a situation from repeating itself in the future.

Skoufis said the documents and his investigation findings were forwarded to the Orange County District Attorney, the New York Attorney General and the FBI.

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Orange County IT contract conflict of interest claim: What we know