As lawmakers continue their investigation into KentuckyWired, the state’s troubled plan to expand broadband internet to rural residents, the man overseeing the project is pointing the finger of blame at the state’s former budget director, Mary Lassiter.
“I can’t stand this!” Bernard “Deck” Decker, interim head of the Kentucky Communications Network Authority, exclaimed in a committee meeting Friday.
Members of the legislature’s Program Review Committee had just listened to a presentation recapping failures in administrative checks and balances that led to KentuckyWired being two years behind schedule and facing a shortfall of more than $500 million over the next three decades.
“I would suggest you call in Mary Lassiter to the stand,” Decker said from his seat in the audience.
As former Gov. Steve Beshear’s cabinet secretary, the highest appointed position in the executive branch, Lassiter played a key role in shepherding KentuckyWired in 2015, a joint Courier Journal/ProPublica investigation has reported.
Her husband’s consulting firm, HealthTech, also played an important role in KentuckyWired, when it was hired that same year by the state’s private sector partner, Australia-based Macquarie, to help secure federal funding for the project, the Courier Journal and ProPublica found.
The funding effort failed.
The Lassiters, through their attorney, have denied any wrongdoing. Mary Lassiter did not participate in any decision-making related to her husband’s consulting firm on KentuckyWired or any other project, her attorney said in a written statement earlier this year.
On Friday, attorney Guthrie True declined to comment on whether the Lassiters would speak to the Program Review Committee.
But after Friday’s meeting, Decker presented several documents to committee co-chairman Rep. Rob Rothenburger, R-Shelbyville, and his staff.
Decker pointed specifically to a document revealed in The Courier Journal and ProPublica’s reporting.
The document, a proposed work statement from Frank Lassiter’s consulting firm, shows the firm offered to conduct a “full analysis” of the committee responsible for evaluating bids related to school internet service that Macquarie wanted to win to help make KentuckyWired financially viable.
The analysis would involve “biographies, points-of-influence and other pertinent information,” the document said.
Neither Frank Lassiter, nor his firm’s client, Macquarie, have responded when asked whether HealthTech’s scope of work was indeed expanded to include such an analysis, but Macquarie has said HealthTech’s work involved “solicitation advice,” records show.
Bidders generally are forbidden from directly contacting evaluation committee members, whose identities are secret, and the solicitation in question, which the state ultimately canceled, was no exception.
Violating that provision could have disqualified Macquarie as a bidder, the solicitation said.
On Friday, the committee’s other co-chairman, state Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Paducah, said the staff would continue investigating KentuckyWired and that officials including Mary Lassiter could be asked to testify.
Another official who could be called is Stephanie Williams, the project’s designated “buyer” for the KentuckyWired deal, and a person whose name Carroll asked staffers to state for the record.
Williams was tasked to serve as “gatekeeper for all contract modifications,” but told committee staff she had not been involved in or aware of all the negotiations between the state and Macquarie.
Failing to involve the buyer in the negotiations altering contracts that ultimately were signed by former Finance Secretary Lori Flanery could have violated state policy, according to a Program Review Committee report.
State Auditor Mike Harmon also is continuing with a separate investigation into the “lengthy and unorthodox procurement process” that resulted in KentuckyWired.
In September 2018, the auditor published his first report on the project, determining that taxpayers could be on the hook for $1.5 billion for the project, or 50 times what they were originally promised.
Phase two of the auditor’s investigation is continuing, and no date has been set for its release, a spokesman for Harmon told The Courier Journal.
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Written by Alfred Miller. Cross-posted from the
Courier-Journal via the Kentucky Press News Service.