by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
The City of Jacksonville realized a savings of about $80,000 with the help of the Ethics Hotline.
City Ethics Officer Carla Miller has reviewed about 140 calls received by the Ethics Hotline(630-1015) since it opened to the public this year.
Of those calls 30 investigations have been opened, and 13 investigations have been completed and released to the public. Seven of the completed cases were released at the Ethics Commission’s monthly meeting Nov. 24. The recently released cases involved the City’s health coverage, sole source contracts, nepotism, vehicle fuel policy and bid awards. All of the released cases can be viewed at the City’s Web site, http://coj.net/Departments/Ethics+Office/default.htm.
“The hotline case involving the proprietary contract with Aetna helped save the city a substantial amount of money,” said Miller.
In a call received July 14, 2008, the caller expressed concern that Aetna was going to be granted a proprietary contract for the City’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP). This program provides services that include helping employees recover from drug or alcohol addiction or counseling employees who have family problems. The service was previously provided through Jacksonville-based Corporate Care Works 2007-08 and was offered for $134,400 for an optional one-year extension.
The call was received after the City Council was considering a one-year extension of the City’s health coverage, so it could review its policy and determine if better coverage was available. Part of the study involved streamlining the EAP program, which included one “in-house” provider and two contractors.
In an effort to streamline the EAP, the Council considered awarding a proprietary contract to Aetna to provide the service. The City Council Auditor argued that this contract could not be offered to Aetna.
“I took exception to this because it wasn’t a proprietary contract,” said Sherman. “Aetna didn’t offer a unique service, so it couldn’t be a proprietary contract and it wasn’t a sole source because they weren’t the only one out in the market.”
Sherman presented this information to the City Council and the contract was not included in the health plan extension.
The request for the contract didn’t go away. It resurfaced in the City’s Procurement Division of its Central Operations Office.
In a memo dated July 10, the Human Resources Division submitted a request to the City’s Procurement Division to award a proprietary contract for EAP to Aetna.
“I thought I had headed this off during the legislative process,” said Sherman. “If it had not been for a call to the ethics hotline and Carla (Miller) alerting me about the issue, it would have gone through administratively.”
Sherman visited with the Professional Services Evaluation Committee to explain again that Aetna could not be awarded a proprietary contract because it was not offering a service that couldn’t be found elsewhere.
The meeting resulted in a withdrawal of the request, but Sherman was surprised that he had to argue the contract issue twice.
“The extension of the health plan went through the legislative process because permission was needed from the Council to extend the contract,” said Sherman. “But the city has a procurement process for sole source and proprietary contracts so it could go through the administrative process without council approval.”
An explanation of why the request was submitted to the Procurement Division was submitted to the Ethics Council.
“Although we did believe it qualified as a proprietary award when we submitted this request through the Professional Services Evaluation Committee...we withdrew the request on July 15, 2008. We renewed with the existing contract provider, Corporate Care Works, through Sept. 30, 2009 at a lower cost than the 2007-08 contract...The Aetna EAP/Work Life proposal included benefits not available through another provider because of the ability to share privileged information and treatment for total 360° services.”
A request was submitted to the Procurement Division on Sept. 5 to renew the contract with Corporate Care Works through September 2009.
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