The task force is reviewing whether there was any misconduct in the county’s hiring of StarCIO earlier this year. The procurement has drawn accusations of corruption in recent weeks amid reports that StarCIO was chosen without an extensive bidding process — and that the company’s owner and sole employee is the brother-in-law of county Human Resources Commissioner Langdon Chapman.
Testifying before the task force Tuesday, Chapman presented himself as a victim of defamation.
“When politicians start making claims, but really have no proof — just their own speculation, which is tainted by personal hate and bias, they better be especially careful," Chapman warned. "Because when the foundation of their claim is rotten, the entire house falls. And here, the Skoufis foundation is entirely rotten.”
Last month, State Senator James Skoufis joined a group of Orange County legislators, most of them fellow Democrats, in blasting the StarCIO contracts. Specifically, they argue that the agreements were improperly procured and inflated to benefit Chapman’s family, and that the county later falsely produced quotes from at least two other companies to make it look like it considered multiple options. Skoufis has called on Chapman to resign, and referred the matter to both the New York attorney general’s office and the FBI.
“The alleged criminality here is, I believe, extremely transparent," says Skoufis. "Once you actually dig through the many layers of this scandal, of this corruption, it poses the very simple question: ‘How stupid do they think the public and taxpayers are?’”
County Attorney Rick Golden has denied any wrongdoing on behalf of the county. In a statement to WAMC, Golden says the county is not required to undergo a bidding process for professional service contracts, and that StarCIO was “competitively procured in accordance with the law.” Those other quotes, he says, were identified (or “piggybacked”) from other federal, state, and local hiring processes — a practice that Golden describes as common and well-accepted. Furthermore, Golden says the fact that Chapman and StarCIO Owner Isaac Sacolick are related does not automatically disqualify the company, as Chapman was not directly involved in its selection.
Those sentiments were echoed to the task force by General Services Commissioner Samantha Sweikata, who oversaw much of the hiring back in January. If that process appeared swift, Sweikata says that’s because Orange County was without a director for its IT department at the time, and there were worries the county could suffer a cyber-attack similar to the one that temporarily knocked Suffolk County back to pen and paper late last year.
Sacolick, she says, was brought on to serve as temporary chief information officer, help the county review its vendors, and identify its weak spots. Sweikata says part of the appeal was that Sacolick was hands-on and willing to bill his services two months at a time, whereas other companies might demand a year-long contract.
"StarCIO was actually willing to come onsite. That's very rare in IT contracts," says Sweikata. "And he had an overview, he would come in and give us a whole two-month evaluation [of services]...I didn't see that breadth of services in most of the other quotes."
Sweikata says StarCIO was awarded an initial two-month agreement totaling $65,000 in January — but multiple contracts later, that amount ballooned to roughly a half-million dollars over the course of several months. Skoufis’ camp has claimed that Orange County is paying well over the average rate for IT services, totaling the contracts at $823,000. Asked by the task force Tuesday, Sweikata said StarCIO’s maximum payment is not to exceed $800,000.
Sweikata says she learned about StarCIO not from Chapman, but from Director of Operations Alicia D’Amico. Chapman, however, acknowledges he was the one who told D'Amico about his brother-in-law. He says D’Amico sought out his advice around November of 2022 because she was worried some of their IT vendors were failing and costing the county money.
“I deliberately did not tell Alicia that Isaac Sacolick was my sister-in-law’s husband until she came to her own conclusion that she did want to talk to him," Chapman clarifies. "I wanted to ensure that Alicia considered this on the merits, without even a hint of nepotism.”
In his statement to WAMC, Golden says Sacolick will be replaced by a county-hired CIO “soon.”
Overall, county officials insist that they abided by county policy, as permitted by state law. Skoufis, meanwhile, maintains that an investigation is necessary. He contends there was criminal activity in the hiring process, and that the county is now scrambling to come up with explanations. Skoufis says he has documentation that at least one of the other quotes cited by the county was dated July of this year, not January.
“It’s astonishing that they are alleging that, out of all of the hundreds and thousands of IT companies that exist in the United States of America, that it’s just some big coincidence — that they just so happened to pick this one company that is owned by relatives of Langdon Chapman," Skoufis scoffs. "That is absurd on its face.”
The committee’s next meeting is Monday. You can watch the livestream in full here.
