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Auditor: The National Prosecutor violated public procurement regulations

Posted on by Dsen .N
Auditor: The National Prosecutor violated public procurement regulations

The state agency that investigates and prosecutes public officials violated state procurement law when it purchased a case management system, according to the Legislative Audit Office.

The State Attorney’s Office did not use competitive bidding to buy the system. State auditors found the agency also failed to provide written justification for using a single-source contract when it spent more than $131,000 on the system between 2020 and 2023.

Auditors wrote in their report that the agency “reported that it selected the vendor based on interviews with other state and local entities and its determination that using other vendors would not be cost-effective. However, OSP could not provide documentation that other vendors were not cost-effective, and the agency’s informal determination regarding cost-effectiveness does not support the use of single-source procurement.”

Auditors obtained correspondence between the prosecutor’s office and the state Department of Information and Technology that “indicated that a competitive bidding process may be necessary.”

Auditors also noted that the agency “did not have a signed vendor agreement.” The agency also failed to advertise the contract award on the state website and did not obtain required approvals for the purchase, as required by state law.

These regulations limit the use of sole source purchasing to situations where no other supplier is acceptable or suitable. Agencies that use this method must provide written justification.

Agencies are also required to advertise when they award a sole-source purchase. Contracts valued at $100,000 or more must be approved by both the Department of General Services and the Board of Public Works.

The State Attorney’s Office is an independent agency with 13 employees and a budget of approximately $2.3 million. It investigates and prosecutes election and public integrity offenses, as well as bribery, official misconduct, and multijurisdictional crimes.

State’s Attorney Charlton T. Howard III. File photo

State Attorney Charlton T. Howard III said in a response to the agency that the office “acknowledges the concerns expressed by” the auditors.

“Although OSP was a small agency without a dedicated procurement team, it consulted extensively with other state agencies, particularly the Department of Information Technology (DoIT) and one other state agency, as well as our legal counsel, as well as the Maryland Procurement Manual and other applicable regulations, before entering into a small, single-source procurement for the selected electronic case management system, and to the extent we were able, replicated the previous process used by another state agency to acquire the same system,” the agency wrote in its response.

The agency noted the agency’s “unique electronic data management requirements because it is the only agency of its type in this state, and indeed in the entire United States, in which all investigative and prosecution functions for crimes within the agency’s jurisdiction, as well as civil proceedings related to those matters, are embodied in a single independent organization.”

The system the agency purchased had to “support investigative factors such as law enforcement reporting, the ability to manage evidence review and documentation in complex financial cases, search warrant support, confidential informant management, criminal intelligence gathering, and forensic support; litigation factors such as discovery, motion practice, appellate and post-conviction practice, attorney work product protection filter suite and data split mitigation, and on-site trial support; and administrative factors related to agency metrics and mandatory reporting.”

The agency noted the “success of the system” but admitted it was necessary to “deal with any concerns” that the prosecutor’s office was not complying with state procurement rules.

“We will therefore follow their recommendations and begin a new contracting process,” the agency wrote.