Any Adams County Voters Here?

[Rain Man]

Just wondering who you're going to vote for in the Adams County Commissioner elections.

If it helps you make a decision, I'm a business owner in Denver, and we are one of the victims of the contracting corruption in Adams County. We won a large contract with the Adams county government, but it was instead diverted to the friend of a senior county manager who then massively overcharged the county for shoddy work.

We have extensive documentation of exactly what happened, and it is sleazier than you can imagine. If I told you all of the details (which would take pages to do), your jaw would drop at at how astoundingly corrupt Adams County is at the senior staff and elected official level. They are wasting your money by the bushel, and they do not believe that they can be stopped. Their arrogance and abuse of power is unbelievable.

The bottom line is that I have become involved in anti-corruption efforts with the goal of replacing the corrupt senior staff and officials, and reintroducing ethics to Adams County.

Two candidates, Donnia Howell and Gary Mikes, are running for commissioner. Neither has ever held public office before, and their campaigns are primarily based on ethical reform in the county. As one football fan to another, I would ask that you please strongly consider voting for these two people. They are committed to investigating the ongoing corruption and fixing this mess.

Thank you for your time.



P.S. You can check out the candidates here. While both are Republican, please note that I am not a Republican, and the county commissioner job is not really a partisan position anyway.

http://www.vote4howell.com/

http://www.garymikes.com/

[lonestar]

did not know that Obama was running for commissar in Adams county....

[Paladin]

Originally Posted by lonestar

did not know that Obama was running for commissar in Adams county....

Don't be a dumbass.


Dumbass.

[lonestar]

Originally Posted by Paladin

Don't be a dumbass.


Dumbass.

when he mentioned corruption well I had to comment.. "the devil made me do it.."

[Dexter]

Thanks for the info. I've lived in Adams County my whole life and haven't really heard much about this. Ill make sure I do my research.

[Play2win]

Originally Posted by Paladin

Don't be a dumbass.


Dumbass.

Yeah, good luck with that one...

[Meck77]

Rain man there is nothing that you could say that would surprise me about corruption in local politics. See RTD/fast tracks.

[GreasyQtip]

I live across the country, and know nothing of the situation there, but that would bug the crap out of me.

Corruption sucks, and I feel for you since you were personally affected by the situation. Finally a relevant practical topic in this section, I hope the conversation moves along from the usual lonestar uneducated attempt at a shot at Obama out of nowhere.

I'd like to think if I was elected it would be easy not to be corrupted, yet why do you see it happen sooooo frequently, on every levelI know it is just a TV show, but when you watch Boardwalk Empire it seems that corruption has been and is so out of control everything is just fixed and we might as well and smile and go along for the ride.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Dexter

Thanks for the info. I've lived in Adams County my whole life and haven't really heard much about this. Ill make sure I do my research.

This is my goal. Thanks.

I paid $144,000 for this thread, so I'm hoping it has an impact. If you're an Adams County resident and would like to send this to others, post it on Facebook, or otherwise help spread the word, I'd appreciate it. Also, if people know of other Denver-area forums where I can post it, I'd appreciate it.

With regard to Adams County, there have been numerous scandals. The theft of several million dollars in rigged paving contracts is well documented in the Denver Post. Several people are facing prison sentences, but there has only been a half-hearted prosecution and none of the involved county employees have faced notable punishment. Several were not punished at all and still have contract control at the county. The excuse made for the staff was that none of the 16 attorneys in the county attorney office understood basic state law about public bidding.

Less well-known is the office furniture scandal, wherein commissioner Alice Nichol took a multi-million dollar contract from the winning firm and gave it to a friend of hers, with help from the senior staff.

The one reform-minded commissioner came into office in 2010 and so far has uncovered over $1 million in wasted funds via sole-source contracts. There are many other scandals that I won't bore people with, but you can do a google search on Adams County and read about them.

In my particular contract, we have documentation that the following happened:

1. We won the contract based on the selection committee's scoring.

2. The corrupt manager on the selection committee walked out of the interviews after listening to my firm present, and then stopped the process because "all members were not present". She was the only one not there, and it's because she walked out solely so she could have an excuse to stop the process.

3. The purchasing office then wrote up a false reason for stopping the contract award, blaming an innocent low-level county employee for something he didn't do.

4. Despite that employee producing documentation about the lie, and despite written complaints that the corrupt manager was attempting to manipulate the bid outcome, the purchasing office gave control of the project to the corrupt manager. This is a direct violation of purchasing ethics since the woman had an obvious conflict of interest. She was even listed as a reference by her friend in the proposal, and had a long history of giving the friend sole-source contracts.

5. The corrupt manager then created a new selection committee of her own employees, who promptly and unanimously selected the manager's friend to win the contract. This firm had no experience in the field, and had finished very low in the rankings with the legitimate committee.

6. Among other things, my firm had points taken from our score by the sham committee because "perhaps we were overqualified". One selection committee member thought it would be funny to give my firm a score of zero in every bid evaluation category, while giving the corrupt manager's friend a perfect score in every category. (This sham committee member has since been promoted and has been placed in charge of "changing the ethical culture" of employees in Adams County.)

7. The friend won the contract despite raising their price by 40%+ once the corrupt manager took over.

8. The purchasing office submitted the paperwork to give the contract to the friend before all of the sham committee' scores were submitted. The purchasing department's memo said that it didn't matter if all of the committee members didn't participate, despite using that as an excuse to stop the legitimate process.

9. After being given the contract, several parts of the contract were paid for, and the work was never done. Other parts were done in a shoddy manner. In fact, the County even canceled the public presentation of the results, which I believe was because they were aware of the poor quality and mistakes.

10. The county attorney office has denied us the right to several public documents in our investigation of the contract rigging. For example, they denied us the rights to view the e-mail of one manager because "she deletes every e-mail she gets at the end of every day". On other critical documents, they have never given us the documents, continually claiming that they "forgot" or "are looking for them". By law, these documents should be provided within three days of the request.

11. After several attempts, we finally got the county to agree to conduct an audit of the contract. The county administrator and county attorney's audit says that all of the work was done on time. In reality, several elements were never done and the shoddy work that was completed was several months late.

12. The county attorney confirmed to me that "nobody will ever listen" as long as the current commissioners are in place, and bragged to me that even if he gets fired, his contract with the county administrator will give him a year of pay as a bonus. (They're friends.) The deputy county attorney has told other people that the county is in the wrong, but she is more interested in helping her own career than in doing the right thing. She has since been promoted to county attorney in a non-competitive process.

We have documentation of all of this.

Our goal is to get Howell and Mikes elected so we can actually see a legitimate investigation, and our goal is a complete overhaul of the county administrator, county attorney, and purchasing offices.

Sorry if this is a long post, but I paid $144,000 for it. I want to get my money's worth. Please spread the word to others.

[Old Dude]

Adams County voter here.

1. Yup, the corruption was outrageous. Some of them have already been convicted of felonies.

2. Regardless, I will not be voting for any republican at any level of government for any reason, ever.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Old Dude

Adams County voter here.

1. Yup, the corruption was outrageous. Some of them have already been convicted of felonies.

2. Regardless, I will not be voting for any republican at any level of government for any reason, ever.

Just curious, but why not? At a local level, a county commissioner position isn't partisan. Many county commissions don't even list party affiliation. The only reason they do in Adams County is so the corrupt Democrats can take advantage of the fact that there are more Democrats in the county, and many like you will vote along party lines.

If you look at the positions the various candidates are taking, there's no substantive difference between the Republicans' proposals and the Democrats' proposals. The big difference is that the Democrats have consistently placed people into office who have abused their power for personal gain. Since 2007, there have been scandals involving the county commissioners (3 Democrats until 2010), county assessor (2 Democrats), county coroner (1 Democrat), RTD Board Member (1 Democrat), County Treasurer (1 Democrat), and County Trustee (1 Democrat). Notice a particular pattern?

And as I mentioned, I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and I've voted both ways in the past. I'm just a businessman who had a $144,000 contract stolen so that a corrupt employee could give it to her friend. I know the leaders of Adams County personally because of that experience, and that place needs a visit from the voter version of Darth Vader and the Death Star.

[Old Dude]

Yeah, I've noticed that commission candidates tend to omit their party alligience (in Adams County) when they are republicans, probably because, just as you said, that's perceived as a disadvantage. Your point cuts both ways.

The fact that they don't want me to know they're republicans doesn't exactly inspire my confidence in them.

I doubt that the offices in question are entirely non-partisan or that all of their positions are exactly the same. But, assuming for the sake of argument that you're correct about that, you still haven't given me a good reason to vote for the republicans.

If I refused to vote for someone in a certain party, merely because someone else in that party abused the public trust, was corrupt, stole money, and wound up being convicted of felonies, I'd never be able to vote for anyone at all, because all the parties have had their bad apples at one time or another.

I'm simply not willing to assume that because one democrat is a thief that all democrats are thieves, any more than I'm willing to assume that, just because one republican is a thief, they all are.

What I judge them on is the social policies that they support as a result of their political affiliation, and on the vast majority of contested issues, I agree with the democrats more than the republicans.

If you could show that the Dem candidate in this instance was in cohoots with the scum who ripped you off, that would be a different story. Instead, you seem to be just assuming that, or else not caring whether he was or not.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Old Dude

Yeah, I've noticed that commission candidates tend to omit their party alligience (in Adams County) when they are republicans, probably because, just as you said, that's perceived as a disadvantage. Your point cuts both ways.

The fact that they don't want me to know they're republicans doesn't exactly inspire my confidence in them.

I doubt that the offices in question are entirely non-partisan or that all of their positions are exactly the same. But, assuming for the sake of argument that you're correct about that, you still haven't given me a good reason to vote for the republicans.

If I refused to vote for someone in a certain party, merely because someone else in that party abused the public trust, was corrupt, stole money, and wound up being convicted of felonies, I'd never be able to vote for anyone at all, because all the parties have had their bad apples at one time or another.

I'm simply not willing to assume that because one democrat is a thief that all democrats are thieves, any more than I'm willing to assume that, just because one republican is a thief, they all are.

What I judge them on is the social policies that they support as a result of their political affiliation, and on the vast majority of contested issues, I agree with the democrats more than the republicans.

If you could show that the Dem candidate in this instance was in cohoots with the scum who ripped you off, that would be a different story. Instead, you seem to be just assuming that, or else not caring whether he was or not.

This is a great point, and honestly it's something that I've thought about quite a bit.

The truth is that I know nothing about the motivations of the Democrat candidates for this office. They could be great people, and they could be interested in the same reforms as the Republican candidates. It comes down to individual motivations, and it's possible that they could be just as committed to reform.

However, I'm going to play the odds, and there are five compelling reasons that I have chosen to promote and support Donnia Howell and Gary Mikes. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not a Republican, so party affiliation is NOT one of those five reasons.

First, there's an easy reason. The Democrat candidates have not stated that they are running to fix the corruption. Both Republican candidates have stated that this is truly their motivation to run. Neither of them are politicians - they're both running for office for the first time. When combined with several of the issues below, I have strong reservations that the Democrat candidates will take action if elected. They've talked about ethics just because it's such an obvious concern to voters, but it's clearly not their true priority.

Second, one of the Democrat candidates has also made some comments that it's "a marketing issue" and that "the Denver Post is out to get us". (The quotes are paraphrases.) This implies to me that there's not a serious recognition on this person's part that corruption is a problem. As a person who has seen it firsthand, it is THE problem that needs to be addressed.

Third, there's a likely conflict of interest with the Democrats. The corrupt senior staff were retained and promoted by the Democrats who are currently in office, and they are all buddies with each other. Because the incumbent Democrats are in their last months of office, they've been making an effort to entrench their friends by promoting them and giving them new contracts, and there's strong reason to believe that they will pressure any new Democrats to protect them as well, not just because they're friends but also because they know where the bodies are buried. I question whether a new set of Democrats will pursue justice against the friends of their predecessors, because they're all part of the same clique of friends and allies.

Fourth, let's face it. The Adams County Democratic Party is absolutely terrible at selecting and vetting candidates. In the past five years, we've had three county commissioners with direct involvement in scandals - all Democrats. We've had a major county assessor scandal. He's a Democrat. We've had scandals with the elected (former) coroner. He's a Democrat. We've had minor scandals with the Public Trustee and County Treasurer. They're both Democrats. We had a major scandal with Adams County's RTD Board member. He's a Democrat. I think it's safe to conclude that the Democrats do not have a history of fielding ethical candidates. This is a pattern.

And fifth, let's talk about influence. Who has access to the Democratic candidates? While 70+ percent may be fine people, did you know that 24 of the Democratic caucus voted for Alice Nichol to be the candidate again? Alice Nichol? Google her name and 'paving' or her name and 'office furniture' or her name and 'assessed value' or her name and 'nepotism' and tell me if you think she's who you want. And now recognize that if a Democrat gets elected, he or she will have that 24 percent of caucus voters helping to guide his or her decisions. It seriously amazes me that 24 percent of local Democrats actually wanted to see her back in office, and makes me wonder about their motives. I know for sure that those people won't have inside access to the Republicans. Add that to the access that the current incumbents will have (they all know each other), and you have a strong recipe for continuing the same old thing.

So the bottom line is this: I can't say that the Democrat candidates are bad people. I don't know them. What I can say is that the local Democrat Party has a strong history of putting forth corrupt and unethical candidates in great numbers, and even if these people are top notch, they're going to be influenced by the local party leaders.

It's obviously your choice on who to vote for, and I respect your dislike of the Republicans. Frankly, I don't really like either party. But I have come to know Donnia Howell and Gary Mikes, and they are the type of people we need in Adams County right now. I have also come to know the cohort of Democrats and staff that currently control the county, and they are some of the worst people I have ever encountered in my life.

If you don't want to vote Republican, could I interest you in a write-in vote? Or perhaps voting for that third-party guy, Fariello, in the District 2 race?

And I appreciate the civil conversation about this.

[Rain Man]

People, people. How can you read this thread and still consider voting for Tedesco or Henry? I'm a real live person who has no political affiliation, and I'm telling you from firsthand experience that the local Democratic party in Adams County is rotten and corrupt to the core. We have to get these people out of power and let honest people regain control of that organization.

Vote for Obama if you want. Vote for any Democrat if you want. But please vote for the Republican candidates in local Adams County races. They're good people, and they're adamant about investigating the corruption and fixing things.

[Old Dude]

Sorry it took so long to get back.

As per your most recent points, here are my disagreements:

1. Anyone running for political office, as far as I'm concerned, is a politician. If they weren't before, they are now.

2 and 3. I've got to assume that if the DA had any goods on other members of the staff, they'd have been prosecuted as well. Not only that, but, at least in my experience, whenever someone gets caught abusing public office, no one is angrier than the rank and file staff who view it as a smear on their own hard work - just as you view them here. I fully expect the new admin to tow a careful ethical line and especially if they are Dems.

4. It's no surprise that the people in office have been the ones involved in scandals, whereas the party out of power hasn't. That's sort of a tautology.

All that said, I imagine that you'll be happy when election day is done, because there's no doubt that the Dems took a beating over this.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Old Dude

Sorry it took so long to get back.

As per your most recent points, here are my disagreements:

1. Anyone running for political office, as far as I'm concerned, is a politician. If they weren't before, they are now.

2 and 3. I've got to assume that if the DA had any goods on other members of the staff, they'd have been prosecuted as well. Not only that, but, at least in my experience, whenever someone gets caught abusing public office, no one is angrier than the rank and file staff who view it as a smear on their own hard work - just as you view them here. I fully expect the new admin to tow a careful ethical line and especially if they are Dems.

4. It's no surprise that the people in office have been the ones involved in scandals, whereas the party out of power hasn't. That's sort of a tautology.

All that said, I imagine that you'll be happy when election day is done, because there's no doubt that the Dems took a beating over this.

On Point #1, you may be right. I hope not, but there is indeed a big system that pushes them that direction. It's why the occasional iconoclastic candidate is so valuable in tearing those systems down.

On Point #2/3, I would disagree on a couple of points. First, the DA has not aggressively pursued prosecution against any county staff or elected officials. Heck, he's friends with them. And second, the current commissioners are trying to entrench the senior staff to cover their tracks when they're gone. A new administration is going to have all sorts of trouble getting the old staff out, and the senior staff are the problem. There's no way the Democrats tackle this, which leaves the Republicans to do it.

On Point #4, it's certainly possible, and easy to assume if you don't know the people. But how about at least slowing down the momentum of the party that's in power by tearing down their machine for a few years? And like I said, the two Republican candidates are NOT corrupt. I can verify that personally. (And again, I'm not a Republican.)

I appreciate the discussion. I'm really looking forward to the election, because it'll either tell me that Adams County is willing to fix its government, or it'll be a confirmation that the residents don't care about corruption and the theft of taxpayer dollars. If it's the first, we're on our way. If it's the second, I'll at least know that I've done everything I could to fix it, and I'll walk away and let the crooks resume their activities.