The task force chaired by Republican Legislator Kevin Hines has been reviewing whether there was any misconduct in the county’s procurement of StarCIO to temporarily lead its IT department last year. A group of Democratic Orange County legislators, led by State Senator James Skoufis, hosted a press conference in October accusing county officials of corruption and nepotism for the hiring. The president of StarCIO, Isaac Sacolick, is the brother-in-law of county Human Resources Commissioner Langdon Chapman.
Presenting the committee’s final report Wednesday, Hines told legislators the contract was, indeed, “improperly procured,” but that it found no evidence of a scheme to enrich Chapman nor Sacolick.
"Improper procurement is not a crime," he explained. "It’s a mistake."
What started out as a $65,000 contract for two months’ work in January 2023 ballooned to multiple contract amendments totaling a maximum of $800,000 over the course of several months. Skoufis has written his own scathing report on the situation, and referred the matter to both the New York Attorney General’s Office and the FBI, which has subpoenaed the county for documents.
Speaking with WAMC, Skoufis says it’s law enforcement that will have the final say on whether a crime was committed — so while he’s pleased to hear that the committee agrees the contract was improperly procured, he’s taking its stance on criminality with a grain of salt.
"Most of the folks on that legislative committee that looked at this have a preexisting political, and at times personal, relationship with Langdon Chapman and some of the other folks in question here," says Skoufis. "And so it is no surprise at all that they’re covering for some of their friends.”
At the heart of the committee’s investigation was determining what the county’s procurement policy is. County officials have said that, because the initial deal was for professional services less than $100,000, it did not require a competitive bidding process. Instead, county officials compared the StarCIO offer to quotes from at least two other companies.
General Services Commissioner Samantha Sweikata, who was involved in much of the procurement, testified in November that those companies were Gartner and Securance. She admitted her office “piggybacked” the Securance quote through a government database, but the committee determined this was not properly done: Hines says the county should have contacted Securance to get everything needed for a proper comparison.
“The committee found that StarCIO was a valid quote, and Gartner was a valid quote. However, with respect to Securance, there was no dialogue, they were never spoken to," says Hines. "As a matter of fact, they weren’t spoken to until after the StarCIO contract was enforced, and even then it was about a different piece of work that they needed.”
Hines says the committee received a letter from County Attorney Rick Golden at the end of January claiming that the two companies compared to StarCIO were actually Gartner and United Technologies (UTC). However, the report says the UTC quote simply “didn’t make sense,” as it was copied from a previous contract with UTC dated 2021 — and notably, multiple county officials testified that the reason they were looking for a new CIO was because of concerns that UTC was a "failing vendor."
The report also finds county officials did not keep adequate records or provide written justification for the second amendment extending the StarCIO contract last summer. Ultimately, the committee calls for the county procurement policy to be redrafted to better clarify the process going forward, an audit of all current procurement records, an independent audit of all records tied to UTC, and closer attention from the county executive's office.
"Another thing that we found, actually horrific, with respect to the process: highly confidential information was revealed to the director of StarCIO before he was a vendor for this county," Hines adds.
Finally, the report admonishes the lawmakers who sounded the alarm in October for failing to “act responsibly.” The report says Skoufis and the Orange County legislators — including Minority Leader Michael Paduch and Legislators Genesis Ramos, Laurie Tautel, and Michael Anagnostakis — didn’t do enough research before taking their allegations of an illegal “sweetheart deal” public. At the press conference in October, Skoufis specifically alleged that the contract was designed to enrich Sacolick while he faced foreclosure on his home.
Hines says the task force found no evidence that Sacolick was struggling financially or facing foreclosure.
“The documents they had in their hand that day said that Mr. Sacolick’s mortgage was paid in full, the house was owned outright," Hines maintains. "And I’m also here to say that we found nothing wrong on behalf of Commissioner Chapman. We found no evidence that he did anything wrong other than a mere suggestion that his brother-in-law was a highly qualified IT individual.”
An attorney for StarCIO and Sacolick recently sent a cease-and-desist letter to Skoufis’ office, accusing the Democrat of defamation. In a statement to WAMC, the company’s attorney says in part: “We are pleased that the committee has rightly lauded StarCIO and Mr. Sacolick, who is a highly regarded and extremely effective IT professional...We have referred Mr. Skoufis’s tortious conduct to the New York State Senate and understand that it is under review."
Skoufis dismisses the defamation allegation as a distraction from the matter at hand: the contract. And he says the committee’s investigation would have never happened if it weren’t for that October press conference.
“They should be thanking the folks who brought this to light. They should be thanking the county legislators, expressing gratitude to me and my team for exposing this, as they call it, impropriety. They never would have known this was happening if not for us exposing the impropriety and the wrongdoings here.”
Orange County has since found a new, permanent CIO in former Dutchess County IT Commissioner Glenn Marchi. You can read the full report below:
