Jackson Free Press

Larry Fisher, former emergency operations director for Hinds County, defended the city of Clinton's purchase of 19 emergency radios today, challenging the claim by Board of Supervisors President Robert Graham that the purchase violated county policy. Fisher, who retired from the county's Emergency Operations Center Oct. 31, said that the purchase conformed to a policy approved by the state auditor's office and in place since 2008.

Fisher also disputed Graham's suggestion that, under his tenure as EOC director, Clinton received more than its fair of emergency equipment funds, and called the spending figures that Graham cited at a Jan. 14 meeting "a bunch of junk."

At the board's Jan. 14 work session, Graham argued that Clinton had improperly circumvented the county by buying 16 radios for emergency personnel with a check from the county Chancery Clerk's office. The board approved that purchase on July 7, 2009, but Graham said that Clinton should have routed the purchase through the county's purchasing office.

Graham also suggested that Clinton may not need the additional radios. The E-911 Council, which distributes funds to every municipality in the county for emergency equipment, has awarded approximately $200,000 to Clinton over the last couple years, while only granting roughly $20,000 to Jackson during the same time period, Graham claimed.

"That's just a bunch of junk," Fisher said today, of Graham's numbers. The E-911 Council approved a $9.5 million system for Jackson, which the Council is paying for in installments, Fisher said. Fisher also said that the state auditor's office gave its explicit approval to a policy that would allow counties to purchase emergency radios independently and maintain them on their own inventories.

"I really did not want to be responsible for equipment going to other municipalities," Fisher said. "It's really a problem for a county inventory clerk to try to maintain radios that are given to another municipality. The county's got a big enough inventory already."

The new policy required municipalities like Clinton to follow state purchasing guidelines, but it did not demand that they use the county-approved vendor, Airwaves Communications, to program and activate the radios.

"(Clinton) did not go with the minority vendor the county prefers to do business with," Fisher said.

Instead, Clinton picked Jackson Communications, a Rankin County firm that held the Hinds County maintenance contract for several years before Airwaves, to handle programming, the first phase of making the radios operable. At the Jan. 14 meeting, Graham and Supervisors Doug Anderson and George Smith argued in favor of delaying final activation of Clinton's radios until the board could decide whether they were needed and whether had violated policy.

Previous Comments

ID

155232

Comment

[quote]"(Clinton) did not go with the minority vendor the county prefers to do business with," Fisher said.[/quote] I take it this is the actual beef.

Author

Ironghost

Date

2010-01-18T16:58:46-06:00