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JONI JAMESA state agency hired an ex-corrections secretary to oversee two contract matters.
TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Jeb Bush asked his inspector general Monday to investigate whether the state agency overseeing private prisons violated the law last year when it hired his former corrections secretary as a consultant.
The Correctional Privatization Commission hired Michael Moore in April 2003, three months after he resigned as Bush's corrections secretary. Moore, who now lives in Texas, was paid $64,000 to oversee the commission's efforts to rebid two of the state's five private prison contracts. The commission hired him without a public search.
Moore also hired two other state employees, his former chief of staff at the corrections department and a corrections department attorney, to help him.
State law generally does not prohibit agencies from hiring state employees as consultants. But an obscure provision of state law, written partly to discourage conflicts of interest between public and private prisons, prohibits the commission from hiring anyone who worked in the previous two years for the state departments of Corrections or Juvenile Justice or a private company that has a contract with the commission.
Unlike most other ethics provisions, the state law does not expressly state what penalty violators will suffer. Nor does the Ethics Commission have jurisdiction to investigate such allegations.
The decision by the governor to seek an investigation came after inquiries by the St. Petersburg Times, which reported Sunday on questions of impropriety and mismanagement by the commission. The Legislature is expected to abolish the commission this week and shift its responsibilities to the state Department of Management Services.
Bush spokeswoman Jill Bratina said Monday that the inspector general has the authority, if a violation is found, to report its findings to either a law enforcement agency or state attorney.
Alan Duffee, executive director of the privatization commission, said Monday the inspector general will find nothing amiss. The commission technically hired MWM and Associates - not Moore - as its consultant.
Moore is the primary officer of MWM and Associates, state records show. Duffee said Moore's wife also is as an officer. The hiring of two subcontractors also was indirect, Duffee noted, because both those state employees also were officers in corporations registered with the state.
"I'm pleased for the inspector general to come in because we did nothing wrong," Duffee said. "We hired MWM and Associates, not Michael Moore."
Moore's role as a consultant, and the subsequent bidding process, prompted a vendor, Corrections Corporation of America, to file a legal protest late last year that was eventually settled with the commission out of court.
In depositions taken in that dispute, Duffee told the company's lawyers that he decided to forgo any formal bidding process to find a consultant because he was afraid he'd end up unknowingly picking someone loyal to a particular vendor. Duffee said he trusted Moore to be impartial.
- Joni James can be reached at 850-224-7263 or jjames@sptimes.com