Feeble oversight of Essex County’s $40M vaccine program spurred abuses, watchdog finds – Press of Atlantic City

Dana DiFilippo newjerseymonitor.com

It hasnt been even a week since Gov. Phil Murphy was singing Essex Countys praises.

There may be no county in America thats better run than Essex County, he said during WNYCs Ask Governor MurphyprogramWednesday night. There are a handful of the best-run counties in America that are in New Jersey, and Essex happens to be one of them.

But in anew report released Tuesday, a state watchdog says Essex County, which is run by six-term Democrat and Murphy ally Joe DiVincenzo, colossally fumbled oversight of its $40 million COVID-19 vaccination program. County officials flouted federal, state, and local procurement rules and exercised so little control over spending that one politically connected vendor pocketed an identical six-figure payment twice while at least eight workers regularly got paid despite logging full-time hours with other government agencies, the report says.

Acting State Comptroller Kevin D. Walsh found that Essex County officials improperly awarded millions of dollars as emergency contracts continuing to do so long after vaccines were widely available and bypassed the competitive bidding process, public review, and approvals required to guard against overspending and abuse.

The governments obligation to protect taxpayer funds doesnt go away during an emergency, Walsh said in a statement. As we found in Essex County, overusing emergency contracts and failing to monitor vendors and implement basic financial controls increases the likelihood of fraud, waste, and abuse risks that can and should be avoided.

Investigators in the comptroller offices COVID-19 compliance and oversight project launched the probe after an anonymous tipster reported concerns about the program, which administered more than 622,000 vaccines from December 2020 through August 2023 at five sites in Newark, West Caldwell, Livingston, and West Orange, plus from a mobile clinic that traveled around the county.

The investigators found that officials continued to flout the rules around spending federal vaccination funds even though they followed appropriate procedures for other emergencies during the pandemic, such as responses to Tropical Storm Isaias and Hurricane Ida and the handling of indigent burials due to COVID-19, according to the report.

Investigators determined officials failed to document the need for emergency contracts or execute vendor contracts that spelled out the terms required by federal grants, as required. These failures expose the county to the possibility that the federal government could act to recoup the funds, Walshs report notes.

The investigators also discovered lax oversight of the 93 outside vendors the county hired to carry out its vaccination program, including 15 payments totaling $871,211 that were made without invoices, making it impossible to validate what goods or services were provided.

In one case, officials paid a vendor $264,000 for advertising services but couldnt confirm those services were performed.

In another case, the county paid Dunton Consulting almost $1.3 million for robocall services from May 2020 through August 2021 without verifying the calls occurred, and even though the firms invoices were riddled with errors and charged fees that varied wildly, without explanation. The company also charged far more 2.8 to 9.8 cents a minute than county officials paid when they eventually put the contract out for competitive, public bidding, the report notes. The county paid less than 1 cent per minute under the newer contract.

County officials also erroneously paid Dunton $110,514.41 twice for the same services, but the East Orange-based firms owner Rasheida Smith and county officials said they didnt notice the error until the Comptrollers office brought it to their attention, according to the report. Instead of ordering the immediate return of the full overpayment, officials agreed Smith could repay a discounted amount, which they characterized as a loan, over five years without interest, the report notes.

Thats a flawed response because the state constitution prohibits governments from loaning public funds to private companies, the loan wasnt signed by any county officials, county commissioners didnt approve it at a public meeting, and the county hasnt shown it has the proper internal controls to monitor a long-term loan, investigators wrote.

Smith is a Democratic political operative and former campaign manager who has worked for U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, former Rep. Charles Rangel, and other prominent politicians. She co-founded Dunton with Leroy Jones Jr., a former state assemblyman who now chairs the Essex County and statewide Democratic parties. Jones is no longer affiliated with Dunton, NorthJersey.com reported in 2022.

The Countys contract with Dunton demonstrates that excessive emergency contracting without competitive bidding can result in a shocking price tag for taxpayers, investigators wrote in the report.

More than 850 people worked in the vaccination program, and county officials allowed them to log their hours remotely and didnt enforce on-site sign-in sheets meant to confirm their presence, investigators found.

As a result, the county spent $17 million on staffing without verifying that workers worked the hours they logged, investigators said.

Eight workers routinely worked other public jobs at the same time they worked for the countys vaccination program, meaning they got paid by both public entities for the same hours including one woman who collected $130,000 over 11 months under the vaccine program, even though the county health officer didnt know who she was or what she did, according to the report.

Even after firing three workers who were found to have fudged their hours, officials didnt tighten its timekeeping system or bother to investigate more broadly, according to the report. Officials also classified the vaccination workers as independent contractors, meaning the county then didnt pay into unemployment funds or provide benefits.

Investigators shared their findings with the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development and other authorities for follow-up action.

An Essex County spokesman didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.

Walsh and his investigators issued three recommendations, urging Essex County officials to:

This story first appeared on the New Jersey Monitor.

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Feeble oversight of Essex County's $40M vaccine program spurred abuses, watchdog finds - Press of Atlantic City