Clerk of Court and Comptroller Danny Shipp and his financial director Jared Blanton say they keep a close watch on the county’s spending but they are not ethics police for the county’s elected officials.
By Terry Witt -Spotlight Senior Reporter
A new county policy requiring hardware purchases to be rotated among all qualified stores was spawned by a Florida Commission on Ethics opinion requested by County Commissioner John Meeks.
The rotation policy was given to department supervisors early in August along with a copy of the ethics commission opinion saying the rotation of hardware purchases would exempt Meeks from having a conflict of interest.
Meeks can continue to legally sell hardware to the county government with the rotation policy in place.
Meeks purchased Bronson Ace Hardware in January and soon after requested an advisory opinion from the ethics commission on whether he had a conflict of interest for selling hardware to the county government.
The ethics commission issued an adverse advisory opinion to Meeks on July 29 saying Florida law prohibits public officials from selling to the public agency they represent.
State ethics officials however said rotation of hardware purchases would exempt Meeks from having a conflict of interest provided it was done fairly and equitably among all qualified hardware stores in the county.
The ethics commission had met earlier in Tallahassee to discuss Meeks’ case. Commission staff said the advisory opinion is binding on the commissioner.
“We caution that the rotation system implemented must constitute a good faith and fair methodology, reasonably administered, allowing for equitable rotation of both business frequency and purchase amounts amongst all qualified suppliers of hardware goods within the County,” the opinion said. “However the code provides certain exemptions to these prohibitions.”
Rotating purchases is the exemption.
Responding to the opinion, County Procurement Coordinator Alicia Tretheway and County Coordinator Wilbur Dean added a paragraph to the county’s purchasing manual saying purchases of hardware will be rotated among 10 hardware stores in the county.
The ethics commission letter said hardware purchases would be rotated among five hardware stores in Levy County. Tretheway and Dean compiled a rotation list of 10 hardware suppliers in the county to be placed on the rotation list including Bronson Ace Hardware. The county can also purchase hardware supplies in Gainesville. Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Sherman Williams often sell hardware related supplies to the county. Those stores aren’t on the list because they aren’t located in Levy County but hardware purchases can be made at the stores.
Meeks Endorses Rotation
Meeks feels the county responded well to the ethics opinion.
“I think the opinion is clear. As long as we have a rotation purchasing policy there’s nothing wrong,” Meeks said.
Reporter: “Is it your understanding they are going to rotate it as equally as possible?”
“They better,” Meeks said. “That’s what they’ve all been instructed to do.”
Meeks is one of the five commissioners who serve as the employers of county staff members that will implement the rotation policy. He has no direct control over how the policy is implemented.
Meeks managed Bronson Ace Hardware for nearly 20 years in downtown Bronson. He bought the store in January. The store is located within a couple miles of every county office. It was easy for county staff to stop by the store and purchase a hardware item before driving to a work site. The store remains in a central location at the heart of county government.
What has changed is that Meeks now owns the store and the county has a hardware rotation policy.
Meeks said he hasn’t done anything wrong. He just purchased a hardware store that was already doing business with the county.
“This is kind of the way I feel about it. I wasn’t trying to tip the scales in my favor. I just purchased a store that was already doing business with the county and that was established,” he said.
The rotation policy doesn’t require the county to drive from one store to the next purchasing hardware to enforce the rotation. The policy has a degree of common sense built into it. Ethics commissioners said the rotation isn’t intended to force a county maintenance man working in Williston, for example, to drive to Bronson or Chiefland for a plumbing fixture if one of those stores happens to be next on the list.
Meeks said he wants to do what is legal. His store is one of the hardware vendors that can sell to the county. He said it makes sense for the county to continue doing some business with his store.
“If they didn’t do any business in Bronson, then every time they wanted something they would have to go to Gainesville, Williston, Chiefland, or wherever,” Meeks said. “Obviously I want to do whatever is lawful and whatever those folks felt was the best opinion. This wasn’t the first time the commission has issued an opinion in the past. It works for me, so we’ll see.”
Meeks pointed out that the ongoing construction and renovation work on the Levy County Annex building, which is the new home of the property appraiser, tax collector, and county commission office, was done mostly at night after business hours. Most of the hardware store purchases were made at Lowe’s and Home Depot in Gainesville because the stores operate with longer hours.
“I’ll be honest; it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to drive way out of your way for a two or three dollar piece of merchandise, but the larger purchases like bundles of plywood, your shingles or things like that; that definitely needs to be spread around. I don’t have any problem with that,” Meeks said.
Spreading the Wealth
Dean, the county’s chief administrator, said the policy is aimed at spreading the wealth but county staff isn’t being required to rigidly enforce the rotation of hardware purchases.
“We didn’t try to nail it down like that, but we did talk to them and say, hey, let’s make sure we spread the wealth to our different vendors. If you look at what they had already done, they had already been doing that,” Dean said.
Dean wrote the rotation policy and added it to the county purchasing manual without taking the change to the county commission for review and approval. He was authorized by county law to make the changes.
In a previous story, Spotlight used statistics provided by the clerk’s office to note that Williston Ace Hardware had sold no hardware to the county for the past 20 years. Dean said there have been purchases.
“There was a glitch in the way it reported how much was spent there,” Dean said.
The glitch wasn’t the fault of Spotlight.
Dean said he anticipates the rotation policy will result in changes in hardware purchasing, though “not a lot of change.”
“I think staff is aware they don’t want to put anyone in a position where someone is being shown preferences,” Dean said.
Dean said he read the ethics commission letter and is aware the county has bought quite a bit of hardware from Bronson Ace Hardware over the years, but he said the county has bought plenty of hardware from other stores as well. He said there is plenty of competition for the hardware dollar. He cited purchases from two hardware suppliers in particular.
“There’s enough competition because Tri-County Saw Shop and Lane’s Yardware are cheaper. The departments are going to go where they can spread their budgets the furthest,” Dean said.
He said Bronson Ace Hardware is well stocked with everyday hardware supplies that county staff can purchase to “fix a problem the fastest.”
Dean was asked if the county is taking into consideration the value of how much hardware is purchased at a particular store. He said consideration of value and cost savings are part of the rotation policy. He cited the fact that purchases of hardware supplies for the Levy County Annex renovation were made primarily in Gainesville due to cost savings.
“Look at what we did in the Annex fixing it up. Probably the majority of it was done out of county with your Home Depots and Lowes and Sherman Williams for paint,” he said. “It was cheaper.”
Dean said Tretheway will keep track of total expenditures at hardware stores. She will have totals at the end of the year.
Tretheway said a lot of the hardware stores don’t have an open purchase order with the county and employees use a county credit card at those stores. She and Dean review the credit card purchases every month.
She said Parks and Recreation employees shop at hardware stores all over the county.
“If they’re buying with a credit card it’s difficult to report through our system. We would have to go through each person’s credit card to verify which hardware store they used,” she said.
Dean said Meeks is supporting the new rotation policy.
“With the limited conversation I have had with him, he said, hey, I get plenty of business without anybody prioritizing my business,” Dean said.
Flexibility Needed
Commission Chairman Matt Brooks said he read the ethics commission letter and the new rotation policy but he said the county still needs the flexibility to work quickly in an emergency to repair county property and the ethics letter gives the county that flexibility.
“I know they have in the ethics opinion, that if there is an emergency situation and something goes wrong you have the flexibility as a director or department director to bypass to the closest available vendor,” he said. “This is a tough one but I think in this situation common sense should prevail. John has worked at that store 18 to 20 plus years. I don’t think him being a commissioner is going to sway the county to go buy from him anymore.”
Brooks said the county’s purchasing policy still requires large purchases to go to the county commission for bids. He said it’s a hard and fast policy but a lot of the purchases aren’t that large. Many small purchases are made by credit card.
He doesn’t see any major changes coming as a result of the rotation policy but he will look for big spikes in spending.
“Maintenance does fixing and hardware type purchases around the county and parks and recreation, it’s the same thing. I don’t see it changing a whole lot, but that doesn’t mean I won’t keep my eye on it and it’s more than likely I will look at total year expenditures for these items to make sure nothing rises to the level of a red flag such as major increases in purchases for any store over another. I think that’s fair,” Brooks said.
Policing Rotation Policy?
Clerk and Comptroller Danny Shipp and his finance director Jared Blanton were asked whether they would be policing the rotation policy to make sure it was being enforced.
Blanton said the clerk’s office is not the ethics police for the county commission nor is the clerk going to run a daily tab on all the hardware store purchases made by the board’s employees on an hourly or daily basis. Blanton said if someone makes a records request for county purchase totals over a period of months he can assign staff to gather the information, but he doesn’t have the staff to do a daily audit of hardware purchases.
Blanton said the clerk’s office is the accountant for the county commission. He said accounting is the primary function of the clerk as the comptroller for the board. As long as the clerk’s office is presented with a legal expenditure of tax funds and they have the receipts to prove it was a legal expenditure they are obligated to approve it under the law.
Blanton said unless he and Shipp have clear guidance from the ethics commission saying the county can’t do business with Bronson Ace Hardware, the clerk’s office will continue to approve expenditures at the store. On the other hand, if the state ever states clearly that the hardware store is off-limits, the clerk’s office can police it.
“When we have a clear ruling we can actually police administratively. I don’t have that. We are not the ethics police for the elected officials of the county,” Blanton said. “The procurement director for the county and the county management is going to have to police this on the front because by the time we get it, we’re doing a post-audit and the check has already been signed.”
Shipp said his office has receipts for all purchases made by county departments. Every county commissioner signs off on the list of expenditures. He said the list of expenditures the board receives isn’t as detailed as two rakes and a shovel, for example, but he said the clerk’s office can provide receipts in that much detail if requested.
“I think as the clerk and trying to be overseer of taxpayer dollars, if those items come in that are serving a public purpose and somebody authorized and signed to purchase them I still have to pay for them,” Shipp said. “I don’t think I have to run around and make sure it was rotated. I don’t think that’s my job at all, but I told you before if it spikes it would draw my attention because we got it on the computer and we scanned it in. If we see that someone bought a barn for $30,000, that would spike the numbers.”
He said he is aware that Bronson Ace Hardware sells pole barns. He was using the sale of a pole barn as an example of something that could spike the numbers.
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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt September 6, 2020; Posted September 6, 2020
