MCPS Spends Operating Budget $$$ to Fly Administrator to Dallas to meet with ONE Vendor. Contract then Awarded to that vendor without RFP or Competitive Bids. Competitors out of luck. Teachers, buy your own supplies, Directors need Double Scoops at Baskin Robbins. @mcps @mocoboe @MoCoCouncilMD

Double scoop receipt, but no dinner receipt?

MCPS Expense report showing that MCPS spent $495.72 in 2015 sending the Director of Transportation, Todd Watkins to Dallas, Texas in to meet with one vendor. 

The vendor was then awarded a contract without a RFP and without any other vendor being able to bid on this $18 million+ procurement.

Is it standard practice for public school system administrators in Maryland to spend Operating Budget funds to fly to the location of vendors?  Do all vendors get this kind of attention?  

How many MCPS contracts are awarded to vendors without an RFP being issued and without competitors having any chance of bidding?  There are competitors in the exterior bus camera market, but MCPS and Montgomery County Police did not allow any of those competitors to bid on this $18 million++ procurement.  This one vendor was awarded this contract after MCPS sent an administrator to Dallas, Texas.  

Remember there is  no oversight over MCPS or the Board of Education.  The Montgomery County Inspector General will never evaluate this procurement.  The IG released a report in July that evaluated the Police departments participation in this procurement, but the report did not evaluate the actual contract or any of the contract award details because those details were done by Montgomery County Public Schools Interim Superintendent Larry Bowers.

By having MCPS contract with the exterior bus camera vendor, which was in violation of the Maryland law authorizing these cameras, the entire contract process escapes oversight or review because MCPS is not subject to the Montgomery County Inspector General's oversight and there is no required oversight at the State level.

Below is the Expense report for MCPS Director of Transportation Todd Watkins to travel to Dallas, Texas to meet with Force Multiplier Solutions contact. (Force Multiplier CEO and contacts are  now in federal prison for bribery and other crimes related to this company.) 

Did the (no bid) vendor take the MCPS Director out to dinner while he was in Dallas?  There doesn't seem to be a receipt for dinner on the first day of the trip to Dallas. 

2015 MCPS Todd Watkins Trav... by Parents' Coalition of Montg... on Scribd

2016 Montgomery County Boar... by Parents' Coalition of Montg... on Scribd