George Rebane
Nevada County issued a professional services contract to SC Consulting in Pollock Pines contemplating work that started on 10 June 2011 and was completed on 24 June 2011. The presumed purpose of the contract was for the consultant, Steven Steinbrecher, to conduct an investigation, comprised of a series of interviews with county management and staff, in order to finally get to the bottom of the server scrubbing issue that is so prominent in the AtPac lawsuit which names Nevada County, Aptitude Solutions (Florida company), and Clerk-Recorder Greg Diaz as defendants. (For more background see my 21apr11 KVMR commentary and search RR with ‘AtPac’)
I received a pdf copy of this contract that is also available from the Nevada County's website here. It is more or less a standard professional services contract of the type I have both worked under and have myself employed consultants. What caught my eye about this contract was the form of its “Exhibit A” that contains the Schedule of Services and Statement of Work. The exhibit begins with a startling and gratuitously worded preamble that appears to limit the scope of the procured investigation from the gitgo, and thereby provides cover for everyone in the county above and including County Counsel Michael Jamison. To wit, it reads –
Schedule of Services
(Provided by Contractor)
Information Systems employee Kathy Barale ordered the "scrubbing" of the Aptitude AS server that made unrecoverable certain data, that may have had relevance to pending litigation, after a litigation hold email was issued from the County Counsel’s Office. The County is interested in learning why Ms. Barale proceeded with the scrubbing process. If the issue surrounds procedural flaws, what steps, if any, can be taken to minimize the chance of a recurrence? The report is to be delivered to the County Counsel and should be treated as an attorney-client communication and attorney work product.
Statement of Work …
From this we see that Mr Steinbrecher is the attributed author of this remarkable preamble to his own Statement of Work. Yet it is hard to believe that he could or would conclude that Ms Barale “ordered the scrubbing of the Aptitude AS server” before starting his work. Furthermore, he also preemptively states that County Counsel issued a “litigation hold email” that presumably gave directions to preserve any and all materials that may be considered evidence in the case. This seems to clear Mr Michael Jamison of any further responsibility in the matter, since by issuing this email he performed his duty in protecting evidence. Did Mr Steinbrecher really supply all these a priori conclusions that were to become part of the baseline to his contracted work?
Finally, should the work product that the consultant delivered have been to someone who would reasonably have been one of the subjects of the investigation – what was the content of that “litigation hold email”, who wrote and sent it, to whom, when, … ?? And the conclusions of the investigation were then delivered in confidence to that same reasonable subject of the investigation in a manner and format that can keep it permanently from seeing the light of day.
One could further reasonably ask why Mr Jamison would not have recused himself from this effort, and have the Deputy County Counsel Ms Allison Barratt-Green receive Mr Steinbrecher’s report and determine its further disposition.
To me it seems that this contract adds yet another puzzling aroma to a case that has already amply stimulated our olfactory senses. Now if we had a real Grand Jury … .
[30jun2011 update] Opening this morning’s Union at breakfast revealed the belated but blaring headline ‘County orders investigation in AtPac case’. With its usual policy of attributing primacy on this development, the newspaper goes on to review the case and append the latest maneuver from the Rood Center. Apparently the unusual declaration in the Schedule of Services highlighted above was sufficiently odd as to require further explanation by Mr Jamison who, according to The Union, “couldn’t confirm Barale had ordered the scrubbing, from documents he has access to, and said the mention of Barale in the contract was a characterization of her actions, rather than an exact recounting of events”. Really?
Let’s read that again; it sure looks like a pretty strong “characterization” that most English speakers would take for a statement of fact that Ms Barale did indeed “order” the scrubbing. And just who did the 'characterizing' of Ms Barale - Mr Steinbrecher (as represented in the Exhibit) or Mr Jamison (whose emailed directive was disobeyed) or Mr Haffey (who signed for the county) or Mr Monaghan (Ms Barale’s boss) or …? It just gets curioser and curioser.
Barry Pruett's Inside Nevada County Politics has more on this case.
[1jul2011 update] Rick Haffey, County Executive Officer, announced in today's Friday Memo that county counsel has tendered his resignation effective 1 October 2011. This was also pointed out and expanded upon by Barry Pruett and Russ Steele in the comments below.
http://www.theunion.com/article/20110702/NEWS/110709964/1066&ParentProfile=1053
[2jul2011 update] In my conversations with the county’s CEO, Chief Counsel, and Risk Management Officer, as reported here, I urged them strongly to become more open in the information they supplied to the public on the litigation the county was involved in and about the AtPac case in particular. Mr Jamison said that the county would take that under advisement, although at the time he could say very little about the AtPac case other than promising that someone from outside counsel would call me (they never did).
Apparently the county has started to open their litigation portfolio door a little bit as reported in today’s Union (here). Given the information from this article, it would be of great interest to compute the net present value of the AtPac litigation costs taking also into consideration the significant increase in our liability insurance premiums that would most like result from this case’s settlement.
[16jul2011 update] County CEO Rick Haffey reported the following in this week's Friday Memo to the Board of Supervisors.
CSAC-EIA Reimburses County for Atpac Litigation Costs: Peter Cheney, our Risk Manager, reports that the County has received $618,758.10 from the County’s insurance carrier CSAC-EIA. This is reimbursement for defense costs in the Atpac litigation matter.
rebanesruminations.com 
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