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Candidate Questions “Back Room Deals”
08/13/08 - 05:23 PM
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Accusations are flying in the race for Bay County Commission District One.

At Tuesday’s League of Women Voters Forum, aired live on News 13, candidate Dan Estes challenged Incumbent Mike Nelson over recent decisions by the Board of County Commissioners.

“When the county commissioners transfer the old library to Panama City, and there’s no minutes to the meeting - that’s a back room deal.  When our commissioners give a $60,000 a month contract to one guy to run the incinerator - back room deal.  When commissioners have dinner with vendors who receive a $46 million water bond that the Clerk of the Courts say cost us $187,000 - back room deal,” claimed Estes.

The first subject addressed giving up the old Bay County library building.

“There’s no indication of what they’d done, how they did it, we don’t know. There’s no record showing in the minutes of any commission meeting how this was done,” says Estes.

Nelson says there was no need for any commission vote.

“There were no minutes to a meeting, because there’s an automatic reverter clause that goes back to the City of Panama City. Once we quit using it as a library, it goes back to the City of Panama City,” says Nelson.

Estes says that should’ve been made clear to the public. “If they have the information put it out. Don’t give the implication that something’s going on. So if that’s the case fine, let us know,” he says.

Another concern: Bay County’s contract with Engen, LLC to run the Waste-to-Energy facility.

“They say it’s a company.  I say it’s a company run by one person. You’ve given them a $720,000 a year contract with no bids. They just handed it to him,” says Estes.

“There’s a lot of businesses that are owned by one person, but they have employees, they take care of admin, they take care of accounting, they take care of engineering… If you want to break it down as to what it is, it’s $82.10 per hour to operate the incinerator, which is what we’re paying them,” says Nelson.

News 13 asked Nelson if bidding out the contract would have benefited the county.

“Not for this length of time, because most people are going to want a longer term contract, and we wanted something short term, so we could determine what’s actually going on out there,” he responded.

A third point of controversy, the Bay County Commission awarding a $47 million bond deal to Merchant Capital, LLC, to pay for improvements to the county’s water treatment plant.

Nelson was on the committee to review bids from financial institutions for the loan.

The committee ranked Bank of America as the best deal, but Nelson later recommended the commission go with Merchant Capital, the fourth-ranked firm.

“He wouldn’t explain why he did it. Sounds to me like a back room deal,” says Estes.

“I saw the way they were ranking them and I ranked them, and should’ve said something then, but I didn’t.  I left and I called our financial advisor. I thought about it over the weekend. I called our financial advisor and said, “Can Merchants Capital do this job? Are they capable of doing this job?” He said sure. So I said, “It would save us money per bond?” He said yeah… We saved $2.3 million, is the bottom line.

“Lay the numbers out, if he would’ve went with Bank of America, It would’ve saved us $2.7 million, so just because you saved a little bit of money, is it ok to give away the rest of it? That’s not the way you do business with my money,” says Estes.

Nelson maintains there have been no so-called “back room deals” since he’s been on the commission.
“If he’s got all this proof that we’ve been meeting out of the sunshine, he needs to take it to another level. He needs to go to, I guess, Mr. Meadows’s office and go from there.

Both Estes and Nelson are Republicans, and face another Republican Marilyn Shanholtzer in the August 26 primary. The winner of that primary will face Democrat Sharon Sheffield and no party affiliation candidate William Fisher in the general election.

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