MURPHY

PROVIDENCE — In a state budget-sparked confrontation erupting a month after the Department of Transportation’s $102,858-a-year typist first came to light, Republican Governor Carcieri and Democratic House Speaker William J. Murphy got into a verbal tussle yesterday over audits.

What emerged was a letter shedding light on a Quonset Point “improved access” contract dating back to 1982 that swelled from $361,423 to $20 million — without rebidding — as a result of 233 individual contract addendums.

“We will be performing additional steps to determine what internal control steps, if any, are in place at the RIDOT to prevent a contract from exceeding its original cost and scope,” said the letter signed by H. Chris Der Vartanian, chief of the audit division of the Department of Administration.

It also mentioned an instance — at an unspecified time — when an unnamed member of the DOT’s in-house consultant selection committee voted on a contract for a company in which a relative was a principal.

“It is our understanding that the department does not require its employees to file disclosure or conflict of interest statements… [and] there is no specific requirement during the procurement process that a potential contractor file disclosure statements,” the letter said. “We will review these processes and make appropriate recommendations to ensure that the RIDOT is aware of all potential conflicts of interest during the procurement process.”

The letter’s release was prompted by Murphy’s call for a “performance audit” by the DOT, based on a May 9 news account of the $102,858 the DOT was paying Vanasse Hangen Brustlin to provide a typist under the terms of a contract under which it was paying VHB a 145.99-percent overhead rate — plus a 10-percent “fixed fee” profit — to staff a traffic-monitoring center.

Yesterday, Murphy said he had asked the legislature’s auditor general, Ernest Almonte, “to look into DOT’s practices of awarding contracts and outsourcing the department’s functions to private contractors.”

“The auditor general has the resources and the skills to take an independent look at how deep and how wide this ‘iceberg’ really is,” Murphy said. “I am deeply troubled, particularly at a time when we are looking at severe cuts to the state budget, that such senseless practices have been ongoing.”

The Carcieri administration responded by releasing Der Vartanian’s letter to Gerald S. Aubin, the newly reinstated state Lottery director — and former deputy Providence police chief — who the governor assigned to head up a task force to determine if there are other contracts with similarly “outrageous” overhead rates.

Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal said the timing of the letter was coincidental, “but it certainly points out that [DOT Director] Jerry Williams and the team at the DOT are already doing a lot of work to uncover these issues. They have made significant progress in a very short period.”

“We welcome any help we can get in this process,” Neal said, but “it is interesting to note that director Williams reached out to the auditor general about two weeks ago to request his assistance in this process. Unfortunately, at that time, the auditor general declined to lend his help.”

Almonte, in a brief and rare interview, said: “It wasn’t a request for me to do an audit.”

He said Aubin, Williams and Der Vartanian “were doing the work. They asked me if I would lend auditors to them to work as part of their team. That was what the request was, and I told them that I would not do that because I’m supposed to remain independent of the executive branch, so when I go to do an audit I’m not part of the management team.”

kgregg@projo.com