Blaming Private Companies for Government Procurement Errors
The blaming of private companies for government procurement errors is one I deal with frequently at my privatization blog. This seems to be a particularly egregious example:
Maricopa County officials can't sue the Sheriff's Office for buying a $465,000 bus without their approval, so now they want to sue the bus company.
Precisely why Motor Coach Industries would be sued over the internal squabble remains unclear.
The county has maintained in this months-long bus battle that Sheriff Arpaio's office bought the vehicle with Jail Enhancement funds, when it should have used a typical county procurement process.
From the bus company's point of view, though, the Sheriff's Office was a customer with cash. For the county to demand a full refund, without so much as a deduction for the depreciation, seems like a raw deal for MCI.
Cari Gerchick, spokeswoman for the county, says text of the lawsuit won't be released until after the Board of Supervisors votes on it at Monday's meeting. She could not provide the legal justification for the expected lawsuit, beyond saying that MCI "should have known" the MCSO had not followed the county's procurement process.
Get that? The company should have known that our County's chief law enforcement officer was not following the law. This is obviously an absurd contention, but further the company had two geographic disadvantages: 1. Not being from AZ, they don't know just how unethical our sheriff really is; and 2. Being from Chicago, even if they had recognized unethical behavior, they would have assumed it was perfectly legal
