Fire up the grill for fishy Census contracts

I only told you half the story in a recent column about whistleblower

Stefani Butler and my crusade against abuses at the Census Bureau.

Yes, we were — and still are — trying to reduce fraud in government statistics. But we also have been attempting to get the Census Bureau’s finances audited.

Why? Because long ago we noticed contracts awarded without competitive bidding — business that seems to go to companies that are tight with Census officials.

Maybe it’s just that statistics is a small industry and this is unavoidable. Maybe not.

I wrote about some of these contracts before. And Butler is still in touch with the House Oversight Committee — which has permanent authority over Census — to get this matter more thoroughly investigated.

Coincidentally, right after I identified Butler for the first time in a column a couple of weeks ago as my whistleblower, the Oversight Com- mittee issued a press release with the headline “Oversight Leaders Encourage Trump Administration to Protect Whistleblowers.”

That would be a very good idea. Nobody at Census protected Butler.

President Trump says he is looking for ways to save taxpayers’ money. In that case, an audit of the Census Bureau’s $1.5 billion annual budget would be a very good idea.

And a $140 million contract running from 2009 through 2014 and given to McManis & Monsalve Associates, the National Opinion Research Centers (NORC) and others would be a good place to start.

It’s difficult to tell from public documents exactly where that contract’s money was going and what precisely it was for.

Here’s how a press release from McManis & Monsalve explained the contract: “To remain preeminent in its field, the US Census Bureau must conduct research and analysis continually to support their [sic] capability to carry out tasks for surveys and censuses.”

OK, that’s pretty unenlightening — as well as ungrammatical.

Major players at Census float back and forth between companies like McManis and NORC and the Census.

John Thompson, now the head of the Census Bureau, was the president of NORC when he became a parttime adviser to the bureau in 2009.

Census wouldn’t say whether Thompson was paid to consult.

But 2009 is the year the $140 million contract was awarded. Thompson didn’t leave NORC until 2013, when he got the top job at Census.

Nancy Potok also became a parttime adviser to Census in 2009, again, the year the contract was awarded to McManis — where she was chief financial officer.

Potok seems to have left the company that year to join the government full time. Again, Census wouldn’t say if she was paid to advise.

There’s no way of knowing when negotiations began on that $140 million contract or when, in 2009, Census started talking to Potok and Thompson about becoming advisers. But it would be nice if investigators looked into whether there was a conflict of interest.

Potok, by the way, was recently named chief US statistician. President Trump — who has expressed doubts about the government’s economic data, especially the unemployment rate produced by the Census Bureau— should look carefully at her recent promotion.

When I asked about possible con- flicts of interest, a Census spokesman admitted that Thompson and Potok were “working at companies that had business dealings with Census” when they were named special advisers.

Also included in the contract was a company where Ken Prewitt — also named a Census adviser in 2009 — was working.

Census says the $140 million contract was no-bid. It said 37 contracts were issued under the $140 million deal. But it says that Census “did not issue any orders against these contracts, so the company only received a guaranteed minimum of $1,000.”

Census said this referred to just McManis & Monsalve. The bureau couldn’t comment on how much the other contract winners collected.

It was unclear whether Census meant to say that none of the 37 companies received more than $1,000 or whether it was referring to a specific company. I couldn’t get a clarification.

“We are not aware of any wrongdoing pertaining to the award of contracts,” Census said.

After I made an issue of no-bid contracts back in 2015, the Commerce Department said it would investigate. Commerce’s inspector general, who oversees Census, said at the time that all no-bid contracts would be looked into, which was good because the Obama administration had already said it was against these kinds of bids in the first place. Commerce said Monday that an audit of the bureau’s books continues. Why did I get on this subject in the first place? Because another whistleblower had pointed out to me a $2-million-a-year contract that was given to the University of Maryland without competitive bidding. That whistleblower, like Stefani Butler, was eventually forced out of the Census Bureau. What makes that situation even morem troubling is that this whistleblower was in charge of monitoring the university’s contract. He was supposed to point out suspected wrongdoing. But when he did, the bureau came down on him. Census said Commerce asked it to conduct an investigation of the university contract and it found no wrongdoing. The whole thing stinks. I think it has to be turned over to the Justice Department. Census and Commerce can’t be trusted to investigate themselves.