ABC reports this morning that the Maryland firm Smartronix has won what seems like an enormous $18 million contract to re-design the Recovery.gov website. Approximately $9.5 million would be spent by January in order to make “Recovery 2.0” out of the site that is supposed to track the spending of federal stimulus funds in detail.
Smartronix, a medium-sized Maryland-based firm (over 500 employees) founded in 1995, boasts a large number of government clients, mostly military. The company appears to have just one important political connection: according to FEC records, Smartronix president, Mohammed Javaid, vice president Alan Parris, and partner John Parris have together given $19,000 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D) since 1999. There is no record of a Smartronix employee contributing to any other federal politician.
UPDATE: Smartronix got $260 million in other federal contracts
Smartronix has received more than $260 million in federal contracts since the year 2000, with the top awarding agencies being the U.S. Navy, Federal Technology Service, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Minerals Management Service, and the Office of Policy, Management and Budget (not clear which department or agency issued this contract), according to USASpending.gov.
Nearly $180 million of the contracts awarded to Smartronix during the period 2000-2009 were awarded on less-than-competitive basis, including $21 million for non-competitive awards. Another $33 million was awarded in competitive processes in which Smartronix was the sole bidder.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has more details on Smartronix government contract awards. — Update by Mark Tapscott.
UPDATE II: Hoyer spokesman demands headline change
Stephanie Lundberg, Hoyer’s spokesman, said the House Majority Leader had no involvement in the awarding of the contract to Smartronix, and that his office didn’t even know about the award until last night, presumably as a result of a posting on the ABC News blog, The Note.
Lundberg also strongly objected to what she called “the suggestion in your headline that this was awarded to them because of Mr. Hoyer. He had no involvement whatsoever with this contract, and you should change the headline. That crosses the line.” Lundberg also said Smartronix is “just a small company in our district, in St. Mary’s County, they have no political involvement, they were just supporting their hometown congressman.”
St. Mary’s County, MD, is at the lower tip of the Southern Maryland peninsula and is home to multiple Navy facilities, including the Naval Air Station Patuxent. — Update by Mark Tapscott
UPDATE III: USASPENDING.GOV much cheaper
Although the short timeline of the Recovery 2.0 project may render the comparison unfair, the site will be vastly more expensive than USASpending.gov, whose purpose is similar. The USA Spending site, which came about as a result of transparency legislation written by then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., tracks federal contract spending by state, zip code, and Congressional District, as well as by contractor and type of award. It also gives details down to the transaction level for contracts made in every year since 2000.
The software package for USASpending.gov was purchased from a non-profit budget watchdog group, OMB Watch, for just $600,000.
One thing the new Recovery site must do that USA Spending does not is gather information from contractors on how they use the money — for example, how many jobs they create with stimulus money. But this information will be submitted by federal stimulus contractors through the web portal FederalReporting.gov, which has another contractor, CGI Federal.
Ed Pound, a spokesman for the agency that operates Recovery.gov, told The Examiner that Recovery 2.0 will have even more functions than USA Spending. He rejected any notion that the $9.5 million cost for the rest of this year, or the potential $8.5 million in optional renewals for the out years, is excessive. “I would personally describe that as nonsense,” said Pound. “We are not interested in wasting the taxpayers’ money.”
Pound said that three companies bid on this particular project, which will develop a functional site “from scratch” by October 10 and maintain it thereafter. “We picked the very best of the three we had,” he said.
UPDATE IV: Smartronix query
A Smartronix spokeswoman who promised this morning to call The Examiner about the contract has not yet done so.
