Tampabay: Charge taints vote device bid

Just a day before Pinellas County was to pick the winning bidder on $15.5-million in voting machines, the county's leaders on Monday got disturbing news about the company that had the deal all but locked up.

A Louisiana grand jury in January indicted an executive of Sequoia Voting Systems, a man who would play a key role in Pinellas' voting overhaul. The indictment stemmed from a voting scandal that cost taxpayers there $8-million and put the state's top elections official in federal prison.

The case has not gone to trial. Both Sequoia and the executive, who would serve as Pinellas County's project manager, say he is innocent.

Despite months of study, including the appointment of a citizens committee to check out new voting systems, few county officials knew of any question about Sequoia, which is bidding on voting-machine contracts in Hillsborough and other Florida counties.

In Pinellas, the news cast uncertainty over whether commissioners will vote on the project as scheduled today, even though the county must act soon to prepare for March elections. "We just don't have the answers," said Gay Lancaster, interim county administrator. "I'm flying blind myself here right now."

Lancaster and other top county staff members said all they knew was that Sequoia had some type of procurement problem in Louisiana. Betsy Steg, a county attorney, said state officials had told her that "each one of these companies had issues."

Steg passed that information along to several county staff members and county Judge Patrick Caddell, chairman of the citizens committee, but nobody researched those claims.

Only one Pinellas official, elections supervisor Deborah Clark, said Monday that she had known about the charges against Phil Foster, Sequoia's southeastern vice president.

Foster has made repeated visits to Pinellas to pitch the touch screen voting system. On Monday, he met with county officials, including Clark and Commissioner Ken Welch.

Welch learned of the charges Monday night from a reporter, minutes after leaving the meeting with Foster.

"That's just mind-blowing," Welch said. "Needless to say, I was not aware of any of that."

Clark said she has been aware of the charges against Foster for some time but didn't mention it because she didn't see the relevance.

"Our objective is to find the very best voting system for Pinellas County," she said. "To me, this is irrelevant as to whether this is a good system or the best system."

Clark said she has known Foster for years and would be comfortable working with him. Foster successfully implemented the installation of a Sequoia voting system in Riverside, Ca., which has served as a national model for election reform.

"I know if he's the project manager here, it will be done right," Clark said.

Foster said the charges against him shouldn't influence Pinellas' commissioners decision on Sequoia, which was the favorite of the citizens committee that evaluated various systems. He volunteered to step aside as the project manager if necessary.

"It has nothing to do with the company I work for," he said. "It's just a personal problem. . . . I didn't do anything, and I'll get my day someday to prove it."

The Louisiana prosecutor handling the case, Assistant District Attorney Sandra Ribes, said that Foster and his brother-in-law, a former Sequoia sales agent, were the only Sequoia representatives implicated.

Sequoia CEO Peter Cosgrove said that Foster is "a person of the highest integrity and character," and he questioned the timing of the news.

"Every time we get close in a county, our competitors will always put this out," Cosgrove said.

Sequoia has become a major player in Florida's effort to retool its election technology after last year's chad-filled election disaster. The company has secured contracts to provide touch screens in Palm Beach and Indian River counties and is competing in Hillsborough, Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

Its chief competitors are Nebraska's Election Systems & Software, the second-place choice in Pinellas, and Global Election Systems of Texas.

The county's relationship with ES&S came under scrutiny after news surfaced that Clark's husband had worked for the company for many years. Clark decided not to play a role in the county's decision as a result.

Foster faces two counts of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit malfeasance in office as part of a ring to sell Sequoia equipment to Louisiana at inflated prices and use the profits for kickbacks. The state's top elections official pleaded guilty last year, as did Foster's brother-in-law.

Commission Chairman Calvin Harris and Caddell said they were aware there had been a problem with Sequoia in Louisiana, but both understood that all of the companies had problems in their pasts.

Harris noted that the county only had a few companies to choose from.

"We've done everything we could to make sure there was an arms-length negotiation on these things," Harris said. "We have to look at this objectively and not get tied up into the emotions of, "Some guy might be a crook."'

But other commissioners found the news disturbing and said they wished they knew earlier.

"Oh my God," Commissioner Susan Latvala said repeatedly after Foster's charges were described by a reporter. "We just didn't need that to complicate the issue. I just thought my decision was so easy. . . . Obviously it has to weigh in."

Both Latvala and Welch said they would want Foster removed as the project manager. Latvala said if Foster is going to trial, he might not give Pinellas County his full attention.

Latvala said she has to decide whether Foster's charges were enough to make her reconsider her support of Sequoia. Latvala said she wants answers from the company today, and if she can't get them, she would consider delaying the vote.

-- Times staff writer Tom Tobin and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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