FOI turns up CityCaucus's Mike Klassen's invoices to City under Sullivan, but no contract
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Right wing bloggers linked to the NPA have spent the last couple of months spreading dirt on Vision-linked communications firm FD Element.
“Corrupt”. “Dishonest”. ‘Disgusting.” “A straight up gift to political supporters.” That last quote is from Mike Klassen, who has blogged extensively about the FD Element contract on his site Citycaucus.
The remark is in a comment made by Klassen in response to a commentator. Here's the whole comment:
"Chris, while I salute your earnestness and devotion to Vision Vancouver, my friendly advice is to stick to bikes. This expenditure by Gregor's office and the City was a straight up gift to a political supporter, and it's poor value for the money. Not to mention that it is unprecedented political marketing done by City Hall. Just give it a rest. We get that you think that it's okay to bend the rules because it's Vision".
It turns out Klassen is guilty of exactly the same thing for Mayor Sam Sullivan - with one big exception. It appears Klassen’s partner at CityCaucus – former Sam Sullivan Chief of Staff Daniel Fontaine – may have broken contracting rules to make his “straight up gift” to Klassen, a long time NPA and BC Liberal organizer.
A couple of months ago I used FOI to ask for city contracts related to Thinking Cap’s web work for Mayor Sam Sullivan. NPA insiders will know that Thinking Cap is Mike Klassen’s web company.
FOI staff emailed me on September 15th to let me know they couldn’t find any contracts with Klassen or Thinking Cap. But they did find payments.
Beginning in February 2006 and ending on the last day of Mayor Sullivan’s tenure in December 2008, Klassen invoiced the Office of the Mayor fourteen times for a total of $28,299.28. That’s about the same as FD Elements charged for its web work on behalf of the current mayor.
So Klassen and FD Elements are in the same boat. Both provided web services. Both did similar work and both charged about the same amount.
The only difference is that there is no evidence that Klassen had a contract to do the work. It appears Thinking Cap just billed Sullivan’s Office, Fontaine signed off and the City paid.
So?
Well, just try submitting an invoice without a contract. You won’t get paid, because it’s against city policy to conduct business that way. The very first point in the City contracting policy says “Written contracts are required in all cases and must include the following: what the consultant is to do...” The contract must also say how long the term is for.
Tory blogger Alex Tsakumis called FD’s contract scandalous and said it was “disgusting on every level”. Global News signed on to the attack. But Klassen and his partner Daniel Fontaine get free passes from bloggers like Tsakumis and the reporters at Global.
In fact Global uses Klassen frequently as an ‘independent’ source – they’ve referred to him as just a concerned parent and as a commentator from CityCaucus, without identifying his role as NPA insider and Sam Sullivan organizer.
Given that Klassen’s got similar money for similar work with the city, the free pass is concerning. Add what looks like Sullivan’s office breaking city contracting rules to funnel the money to Klassen and the free pass becomes outrageous.
Where’s the screaming headline ‘Sullivan Chief of Staff signs off on 28K in payments to website partner against city policy’? Strange how it only works one way over there in right wing world.
Pot, you’re looking a little blacker than the kettle you’ve been beating on.
The Observer asked Mr. Klassen for his comment on this story.
“I think Ian is right that there was 'no contract,'" Klassen said.
"That's probably because I was doing piecemeal work, charging at my hourly rate, kind of like when you bring in an electrician. I recall Anna Lilly asking me for some kind of letter of agreement to cover her bases in case I did or said something that caused them problems. I can't recall if we just did that by email, or if we both forgot because we were both too busy," Klassen said.
“Of course, the thing about getting paid out of the Mayor's office discretionary fund is that [Mayor Sam Sullivan's chief-of-staff] Daniel] Fontaine and [Mayor Gregor Robertson's chief of staff Mike] Magee can make these kinds of calls, provided it's within their budget.
"I stand by my earlier comment that the City can hire suppliers as they will as long as it is under $30,000 and the supplier is competent. Note that it was [Alex] Tsakumis & GlobalTV who made a stink about FD being 'untendered' on the website, not me. So on that one Ian's kind of blurring the facts," Klassen said.
And my own disclosure: My now defunct company bid on and won two contracts under Mayor Larry Campbell – one for the city and one for the Vancouver Agreement. The bidding on the Vancouver Agreement contract involved all three levels of government.
(11) Comments
Nice article Ian … I have been commenting about this very topic on Klassens blog of late and have been continually attacked by his NPA brethren and Mike himself for speaking such heresy concerning his obvious double standards, hell even Allen Gaar made mentioned of it in an article a few days ago on the Courier. Great to see that Klassen himself has finally come clean with his own statement, making his political stripes clear.
What I have found disturbing about all this is not that his work was handed to him un-tendered and without any form of contract, but rather his holier than thou masquerade as an independent voice with open views about the urban issues, and then being portrayed as such by the so called mainstream media (like Global News), amazing!
His blog is simply a one trick pony with a singular goal, to get NPA re-elected in 2011, facts be damned. That’s great if he wants to tilt at windmills through his blog, he shouldn't be portrayed on the CBC and Global that he is unbiased, particularly when he had been feeding from Sam Sullivan's NPA trough for almost 3 years, unabated.
Well as I understand it the problem with the FD Elements / CivicScene connection and the difference to the Mike Klassen situation is as follows.
1, There is minimal breakdown of the FD Elements service as opposed to the hourly breakdown provided by Klassen.
2, There has still been no documented clarification of the 'plumping up' of the FD Elements contract.
3, FD Elements appears to have initially denied a connection to CivicScene which has subsequently been shown to be incorrect, no such oversight by Klassen is alleged.
4,The FD Elements contract is a single payment whereas those to Klassen for a comparable amount were made over a period of years.
5,This FD Elements untendered contract is one of many from which the company has benefited, some well over the old $30,000 limit within which Klassen provided his single service.
It's good to learn, however, that Mr Reid can get an expenditure related FOI request answered in full within two months. Mr Klassen has to wait over a year and still get nothing.
@David Hadaway
1, FD elements had a formal contract with details outlined in such, the invoices referenced his contract. Klassen had no such contract so he simply listed his monthly work activities on his invoices as it was doled out to him.
2, The orginal FD contract was for minor work on a the web site, video work, and planning… the final deliverable was a full blown website (which can be reused for the next mayor, as opposed to the one Klassen built specifically for Sams re-election bid), hence the “plump” which the mayors office obviously approved within the policy, as Sam did for Klassen on a monthly basis … in this case the city actually got something for the money.
3, This article is about the work FD and Klassen did directly for the mayors office, with and without a contract… has nothing to do with their other business relationships.
4, $28K to Klassen from the city coffers, without a contract and $27.5K to FD from the city coffers, but with a formal proposal and contract in place, according the scanned documents found on Klassens site … hmmm
5, As his invoices clearly indicate Klassen was on the NPA payroll directly from the mayors office during that period. And now Klassen runs an NPA attack blog with Sams ex-chief of staff, Fontaine, who happened to be the person that approved all of Klassens monthly invoices! … yup, a bit hypocritical from where I’m standing.
Good try.
It was only a two month wait, but then it was less than twenty pages. And just to make you happy I've been waiting almost six months on another.
Forgot to add that mayorsamsullivan.ca now leads you to a porn site. What is a "fleshlight girl?' Don't think I want to know.
I don't think you'll get that with the FD elements contract.
No, Getreal, I think your answers evade context and are assertions and innuendo given apparent substance by facts which no one has sought to hide.
Actually I don't like any of this kind of spending, whoever does it. I like it a lot less, however,the larger its scale and the fact is that the Klassen expenditure is a drop in the bucket, to coin a phrase, compared to the amounts of public money being poured down the PR toilet by the current council. I'm thinking of the Green Vancouver / Olympic guff in particular, as well as the apparent intention to dump another huge wad on bike lane 'information'. In light of this I really don't care if the defunct site of a defunct mayor, for whom I never voted, now leads to some kind of weird porn.
All perfectly legal, of course, like bloated payoff agreements, just don't expect the people paying the tab to be too happy; especially when a suspicious odour more suited to the soon to be closed for lack of funds Children's Farm attaches itself to one of your off topic topics.
@david hadaway…. reading Ian’s article and the subsequent comments… you seem to be way off base in your attack. The majority of the comments here are about how Klassen portrays one image through his blog, but in reality is no different than those he criticizes.
You have spun off into another whole debate that wasn’t the topic of the article. As I don’t believe anybody here is saying that the work by either Klassen or FD were necessarily a wise investment, in either case. (and that the NPA team under Sam spent a whole lot more on PR than just the $28K to Klassen). But promotional oriented spending is suspect at the best of times, a crap shoot in whether it really serves the intended purpose. But it’s a whole other kettle fish as to how an overall budget it sliced and diced – one can always complain that some particular program of merit didn’t make the cut, there are hundreds if not thousands of them every year, or even that the funds that are spent didn’t serve the intended purpose in the most effective manner. Its far from a perfect world, with many competing needs, wants, groups, and self interests all vying for the same funds…. I don’t know of any governments, businesses, or people for that matter, who always make the right choices every time in how to spent the money available to them.
You will certainly have the opportunity to cast your vote next year to bring in another team of imperfect managers, as we know they all are.
One last observation.
The headline to this article implies that hidden information about Mike Klassen was dug up by a FOI request. In fact I believe he had already released this information himself, had given an explanation which has remained unchanged and which, despite the spin, is not contradicted here.
On the other hand both FD and VV initially denied knowledge of Civicscene, a story that proved factually incorrect, which they had to change when new evidence was brought to light and which I still do not feel has been explained in full .
Far from being an expose of double standards this article, like the blitzkrieg style posting by 'getreal' on City Caucus, seems more like a smokescreen to distract attention from the far more important matter of the behaviour of the city government.
The number of people visting the citycaucus website has been on the decline since the Olympics. They like to stir up trouble hoping someone wil pay attention, but the number of people reading it is quite small. Best to just ignore them.
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/citycaucus.com/?metric=uv
You people are supposed to be running a city, not having hissy-fits over this minutae. Go fill some potholes.