Madison County board member Ray Wesley (R) requested an investigation of the Decker Analytics contract with the Sheriff’s Department by the county’s ethics advisor.
The issue was brought up during the “old business” discussion at the Personnel and Labor Relations Committee meeting Monday but was not included on the agenda, so a formal motion could not be made.
“I would ask if it would be appropriate, and I believe it is appropriate, to have this whole process sent over to our ethics advisor to have an investigation done,” Wesley said.
During the meeting, Wesley said he questions whether the contract between Decker Analytics and the Madison County Sheriff’s Department was an “ethical operation.”
“As I understand it, we had an employee, while still employed, directly negotiated an after-employment contractor with himself,” Wesley said.
“There’s where I’d ask that the ethics advisor step in and give us some direction or at least some information on whether or not that was an ethical operation to begin with."
The Decker Analytics contract began July 1 after former Captain Eric Decker retired in June from the Sheriff’s Department. Decker’s company entered into a consulting contract with the department for $114,000 per year.
Decker Analytics is responsible for handling tasks such as grants, budgetary issues, use of technology in the workplace, human resources issues, and litigation issues, among other responsibilities, Major Jeff Connor previously explained.
The contract had originally been included on the Public Safety Committee agenda, but was tabled in June so committee members had more time to discuss the request and get answers to questions.
Then at the July meeting, Connor said the approval of the special services agreement was not required from the committee. When Wesley questioned how the situation changed from seeking approval to not needing approval, Connor said the department learned that by “state law, county ordinance, and the Attorney General’s ordinance,” professional services agreements do not require county approval.
During Monday’s Personnel Committee Meeting, Wesley said that in addition to the $114,000 contract, the county received a “liability” bill for “additional retirement benefits for Captain Decker.”
“I just got a lot of questions about that,” he said.
He asked how much the bill is for, what the bill is for, and whether or not the IRS has been notified of the Decker Analytics contract, among others.
Jennifer Zoelzer of the Auditor’s Office explained that the IMRF liability bill “is the accelerated payment that’s due upon the retirement of some employees.” She said the payments are handled through the payroll office and occurs periodically with other retirees as well.
Committee Chair Erica Harriss said Wesley may be referring to an IMRF bill for just under $95,000.
“Evidently, that was something that we were unaware of that we were going to have as an expense, and then on top of that we’ve got an additional expense for a $114,000 no-bid contract for the rest of the year,” Wesley said.
Committee member Don Moore agreed with Wesley’s request for an investigation by the ethics advisor and said the problem is that the county board is “in the dark on the answer to these questions.”
“Just because something is legal, technically, … doesn’t mean it should be done,” Moore said.
“I want to preclude this from happening again, too, if we can,” he added. “We deserve the right to have oversight for the people that we represent. And whenever departments, because they are elected officials, use that as cover to spend money, it’s an issue.”
“We’ve asked these same questions … for the last two months and have continually gotten stonewalled with answers,” Wesley responded. “So I’m asking again to get answers to us so we can represent the taxpayers the way they deserve.”
“That might be hearing back from our own State’s Attorney and then sending it along to an ethics advisor,” she said.
Harriss previously sent a letter to the State’s Attorney’s Office with a list of other questions raised by the committee related to the Decker Analytics contract. They asked what is the definition of professional services, could payments cease while the IRS looked into the contract, was the contract agreed to or not and they questioned if the contract was an arrangement to return to employment. Harriss said she has not received answers to the committee’s questions.