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Investigation: Oakland Co. contract with employee’s private company violated state law

Investigation: Oakland Co. contract with employee’s private company violated state law
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PONTIAC, Mich. (WXYZ) — Oakland County is facing serious questions tonight after a nearly half-million-dollar taxpayer-funded contract was found to have broken both state law and county policy. The contract was awarded to a company owned by a current county employee.

Watch Heather Catallo's video report:

Investigation: Oakland Co. contract with employee’s private company violated state law

Now the findings of an outside investigation are public, but they’re raising even more questions about accountability. The Zaydlogix LLC IT contract has been under investigation for months, and some county leaders raised questions about how the findings were suddenly presented without notice at a county committee meeting Tuesday morning. Commissioners say, because the findings were presented as a “communication” to the committee, the findings will not be presented to or discussed by the full board.

The contract was related to Oakland County’s Courts and Law Enforcement Management Information System (CLEMIS) network. Every day, police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and court officials use CLEMIS. The system allows agencies across the region to share criminal histories, 911 call information, crash reports and even biometric data fingerprints and mugshot images. Police officers actively use the system from computers inside their patrol cars.

For years, Oakland County’s Information Technology department has been in charge of CLEMIS, and it’s a staffing contract with CLEMIS that has some county employees now accused of breaking the law.

“Everybody that was involved with that discussion should have known better. They're not young, inexperienced individuals. It's not the first IT contract that they've done,” said Oakland County Commissioner Michael Spisz (R-Oxford) about the investigation into the Zaydlogix contract.

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Spisz is one of several county leaders who’ve been demanding answers about the $450,000 Zaydlogix LLC IT staffing contract.

In early July, a whistleblower sent an email to county leadership, alleging “government employees were using their position for personal gain.”

The whistleblower was alerting Oakland County Executive David Coulter and other top officials that the contract signed in June with ZaydLogix LLC was actually a contract with a current county employee.

The contract was quickly cancelled after that whistleblower’s email, and county officials say nothing was paid on the contract. Then Coulter’s team announced they hired an outside law firm, Miller, Canfield, Paddock & Stone, to “conduct a complete and independent investigation.”

After waiting months for those investigation results, on Tuesday morning, two of Coulter’s top deputies appeared at a Board of Commissioners Legislative Affairs and Government Operations committee meeting and confirmed the results of the outside review: the contract did violate state law when it was given to a current county employee.

“That should not have happened,” said Deputy County Executive Sean Carlson.“We had some employees that were moving forward and did not understand or did not acknowledge the conduct policy, and we should have caught this.”

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“The investigation did not find any evidence of attempts to defraud the county, specifically no evidence that any county employees or contractors were involved in rigging pricing for personal benefit or any sort of kickback scheme,” said Chief Deputy Oakland County Executive Walt Herzig.

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“This is a pretty black and white violation of state law. What is being done on that front, if anything,” asked LAGO Committee Chair Oakland County Commissioner Brendan Johnson (D-Rochester Hills).

“We don't see a need to make any sort of formal referral to law enforcement,” said Herzig.

The county paid Miller Canfield $17,836 for the investigation.

On Tuesday, instead of providing the full Miller Canfield investigation, the county only released a 3-page summary of the Miller Canfield findings.

The summary of the Miller Canfield report was written by Oakland County’s internal lawyers, known as Corporation Counsel. Despite a public records request submitted by the 7 Investigators, the county has yet to release the actual Miller Canfield investigation that involved months of interviewing county employees and reviewing emails and text messages.

“I personally believe that there has to be information missing from the actual report that was done by a 3rd party. Because this is unheard of. I have never received a filtered report, especially when we claim that we’re paying an outside firm to provide a thorough investigation on a really critical, important matter that we don’t ever want to have happen again,” said Commissioner Kristen Nelson (D-Waterford). “To see that at the end of the day we just get a filtered summary from our own internal legal team – it seems pretty absurd.”

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If you have a story for Heather Catallo please email her at hcatallo@wxyz.com.