Why the sudden change?

Here in the patch, we wish HeraldStandard.com would at least attempt to rescue its shriveling relevency by asking a few questions regarding the sudden shift by Commissioners Vince Zapotosky and Vince Vicites concerning the county's copy machine contract.

Instead of putting the contract out to competitive bids/proposals, as has traditionally been done, we learned on July 27 that the Vinces now want to use a state cooperative purchasing program known as COSTARS. ("Copier contract debated at commissioner meeting," Amy Revak, HeraldStandard.com)

What is known, as this point, is that this is all about changing the procurement method used to obtain a service. Instead of using competitive bids/proposals, which generally means the low bidder wins, the Vinces want to switch to picking a company from a preapproved list kept by the state.

What is not known, at this point, is why these two seasoned commissioners, who each have been around long enough to know the various methods for obtaining contracted services, decided to rescind a prior motion to seek competitive bids/proposals and go instead with picking a company from the COSTARS list.

The plot thickens when you read that that, according to a Ford Business Machines representative, his is the ONLY approved copier machine vendor on the COSTARS list. (We find that hard to believe, by the way, and it is something we would like to see checked out.)

What the public should expect a reporter to do is walk across the street to the Fayette County Election Bureau, take 15 minutes to look at the campaign expense reports filed last year by Vicites and Zapotosky, and see if Ford Business Machines founder John Garlow made any contributions to their campaign(s).

If he, or any other known employees of the firm, did that, it certainly would put a different shine on this comment made by Zapotosky: "This is an opportunity to hire local. There's much more to a bottom line than a dollar."

Yes, there is. There are campaign conributions (possibly) -- and there are the votes of the dozen or so Ford Business Machines employees (and their families) who packed the commissioners' meeting on July 26.

The public deserves to know if campaign contributions could be a factor in this equation, don't you think?