The Augusta Housing and Community Development Department has been bypassing the regular channels for purchasing, according to former city employee.
All city departments are required by local government policy as well as state law § 36-91-21 to send most purchase requests through a procurement department. That department’s job is to ensure that purchases above a certain amount or for most kinds of goods go through a required and highly regulated competitive bid process.
But, the Housing and Community Development Department has sidestepped the proper procurement procedure for years, and no one seems to know how the department was allowed to side-step regular purchasing processes.
One person did, for several years, attempt to warn that the Housing and Development’s bid process was not following state law or local policies, and she says she was rewarded with a pink slip.
Kea White worked in both the Procurement Department and the Housing and Community Development Department during her tenure with the city. White, a bidding contract specialist, says she pointed out numerous times that the internal bidding process was not following state law or city policy, but she says she was met with deaf ears.
Darrell White, the deputy director of the Augusta Procurement Department, confirmed the Housing and Community Development Department operates with its own set of purchasing rules.
“They haven’t ever used Procurement as far as I know, but I can’t speak on things I know nothing about,” White said.
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“I tried to tell them what they were doing was wrong, that it was illegal, but no one would listen. Then after five years, with no disciplinary actions in my file, they fired me for accessing my Facebook account while at work. But really, they fired me because I knew too much, and now, I’m ready to tell what I know,” White said.
Currently, the Housing and Community Development Department has two construction projects before the Administrative Services Committee. Committee members will consider those projects and their Nov. 29 meeting. Neither request shows a dollar amount or an official bid package number.
Despite numerous attempts, Housing and Community Development Department Director Hawthorne Welcher did not respond when asked for comment.
This is not the first time the Housing and Community Development Department has flouted state law and used other quasi-governmental and nonprofit entities to create a zig-zag trail of paperwork, according to past reports in The Augusta Press.
In 2020, former state Sen. Charles Walker Sr. negotiated a deal with the Housing and Community Development Department to purchase commercial property at the Armstrong Galleria shopping center on Laney Boulevard, valued at $119,195, for $32,000.
City documents show the land in question was “flipped” over to the Augusta Land Bank and then brought before the commission as a surplus sale, and the commission approved the sale. Normally, when a city divests itself of property, Georgia Code § 36-37-6 mandates that the municipality either conduct a public auction or use a licensed broker to conduct a sealed bid sale to the highest bidder, but the Housing and Community Development Department skirted the law by using the quasi-governmental land bank.
According to Welcher, there was nothing wrong with the way his department handled the matter because the commission and city attorney signed off on the deal.
“The commission approved this in legal session in November of 2019 for the sale price of $32,000,” Welcher said at the time.
A few weeks after the sale, the Housing and Community Development Department hired architects Johnson, Laschober and Associates at the rate of $45,500 for facade improvement renderings at the site.
Welcher had been promising colleagues (who wish not to be named) that facade grants were being applied for the site and even repeated the remarks to WRDW television station in 2017, but the facade improvements went nowhere until just 10 days after the Walker Group purchased units from the city.
The next step was to hire a contractor to make the improvements.
Hiring an architect falls under state law as a “consultant service,” so there is no legal need to take that process through procurement; however, actually getting the construction work done is another matter.
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A consultant service may be an ongoing relationship a city has with a particular entity for uniformity in policy and planning, but any structure that is built, demolished, modified, enlarged or improved is considered a “capital project” and must go through the sealed bid process.
This time, the Housing and Community Development Department dodged the official legal procurement process by using the Laney Walker Development Corporation as a front to handle the paperwork and make it seem the city was contracting through the nonprofit to handle the bids, according to documents obtained under the open records law.
The documents, dated August 2021 clearly show that the normal sealed bid process was only marginally followed and city officials even met privately with prospective bidders in a mandatory seminar, which is clearly forbidden under Georgia Code § 36-91-21.
The lowest two bids for facade improvements on a small strip mall ended up coming in at just under $1 million.
It is important to note that sealed bids through the Procurement Department are also designed to protect the companies bidding as sensitive proprietary information is shielded, but with the open process used by the Housing and Community Development Department, some of the information about the companies bidding on the Armstrong Galleria project is now in the public domain.
To date, no construction has occurred at the Armstrong Galleria site.
Scott Hudson is the senior reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
