By Jim Johnson
The Monterey County Herald
SOLANO COUNTY, Calif. — A Solano County administrator accused of violating confidentiality guidelines and favoring American Medical Response served on one of the two panels that evaluated competing proposals for Monterey County’s ambulance contract.
While he may have been dismissed before the panel reached its final conclusions, questions are being raised about his potential influence on the process.
Longtime Solano Emergency Medical Services head Michael Frenn served on a three-member technical review panel charged with assessing proposals from national firm AMR and Vallejo-based Medic Ambulance for the local contract at the same time the two firms were vying for the Solano County ambulance pact. A separate financial review panel also evaluated the firms’ proposals.
Following allegations of impropriety from Medic President Rudy Manfredi involving Frenn, an unidentified panelist was dismissed for a “potential breach” of a confidentiality agreement before the panel reached its final conclusion. The panelist’s input was eliminated, according to an August letter from county Contracts/Purchasing Manager Mike Derr to Medic and AMR representatives.
County officials have refused to discuss the membership of the local panel, the evaluation process or the scoring results, or release any details, citing the need to protect the panelists from any attempts to influence their decisions and to maintain the county’s ability to negotiate a favorable contract.
Manfredi said he’s convinced Frenn was the panelist who was dismissed.
While county officials indicated they believe the evaluation process was fair, Manfredi said he still has questions about Frenn’s influence on the panel before he left and is concerned that the process could have been “tainted.”
He believes Frenn showed bias in favor of AMR during the Solano County bidding process, despite the fact that Medic ultimately prevailed. He accused Frenn of convening a separate panel to conduct its own evaluation only after the initial recommendation favored Medic. Manfredi said he filed a related lawsuit against Frenn, which is pending.
Based on evaluations from the two local panels, the county emergency medical staff is recommending AMR be conditionally awarded a five-year contract to provide ambulance service in Monterey County, pending negotiations on the final details of the deal. The supervisors will consider the recommendation during the afternoon session of today’s board meeting.
Manfredi said Medic representatives will attend today’s meeting to pose questions about the fairness and impartiality of the panel’s review, and he said he will consider an appeal.
“I’m not threatening, but I’d just like to know how (Frenn) influenced the decision,” Manfredi said. “Obviously, he had inside information on us, so I’m just curious.”
AMR spokesman Jason Sorrick acknowledged that his firm knew Frenn was on the local panel and that a panelist was subsequently dismissed, but argued that the evaluation process was “absolutely” fair.
“This county has been nothing but professional throughout this entire process,” Sorrick said in a statement. “They identified an issue and took the necessary steps to ensure that it did not impact the integrity of the evaluation panel’s review. Any claim otherwise is simply a desperate attempt to try to create a controversy where there is none, and to try to insert politics where it does not belong.”
Supervisors Simon Salinas and Dave Potter, who both served on an EMS subcommittee that reviewed the county’s ambulance system, said they were aware of an issue with one of the panelists, but both said they were assured by county EMS director Tom Lynch that the process had not been compromised.
Salinas said he remains confident in the evaluation of the proposals and has been assured that the conclusion in favor of AMR would have been the same whether the dismissed panelist had been involved or not.
While representatives from both firms knew of Frenn’s involvement early on, neither initially objected. But Manfredi said Frenn subsequently revealed information provided to the local review panel as part of Medic’s proposal in a Solano County report, and Manfredi protested to Monterey County officials.
Frenn, who has served as president of the Emergency Medical Services Administrators Association of California, is on leave from his job for undisclosed reasons. He did not return phone calls requesting comment. Solano County officials declined to comment on Frenn’s involvement with the local panel or the reason for his leave.
Meanwhile, County Counsel Charles McKee said the membership of the two evaluation panels would be released once the supervisors award the tentative contract, but that the panels’ scoring results would not be released until after the final contract was awarded. Both McKee and Derr said the supervisors would not be provided the panel membership or the scoring results until they requested them.
Salinas and Potter said they likely would request and review the information.
The board will consider a proposed two-month extension of AMR’s interim ambulance contract through the end of January to allow enough time for negotiations.
Today, the board also will consider a request from Sheriff Mike Kanalakis to underwrite a $660,000 helicopter purchase a year after the previous program was discontinued, due to budget cuts, as well as resolutions in favor of Salinas’ Measure K 1-cent sales tax and backing a request by Quail Lodge employees who have received layoff notices to be guaranteed jobs when and if they are available again.
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