Commissioner needs to choose his battles wisely

Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak has positioned himself as a vocal watchdog over the county’s dollars. He took on the Clark County firefighters benefits and made enemies among firefighters, and admirers among voters.

The multi-millionaire relishes marching to his own drummer.

But sometimes he doesn’t make a lick of sense and just comes across as nitpicking and pigheaded.

Take Tuesday’s county commission meeting.

This agenda item shouldn’t have been that complicated or taken so long. The county was asked to approve a bid for Meadow Valley Construction to widen the beltway by providing one more lane in each direction between Interstate 15 and Windmill Lane.

Capriati Construction was the low bidder at $30.4 million.

But the company failed to submit a mandatory form that explained who would be doing the work to comply with the Disadvantaged Enterprise Businesses requirement, how much work they would do and how much they would be paid.

The county staff said that meant the lowest  bidder was nonresponsive and had to be rejected. The Nevada Department of Transportation said it was nonresponsive. The county’s legal counsel said by choosing Capriati, the county might lose $30 million in federal funding.

So Capriati’s bid was excluded and Meadow Valley’s $33.9 million bid was expected to be approved.

But Sisolak said the forms as written were confusing and ambiguous. He aligned himself with Capriati’s attorney Chris Kaempfer, who urged the commissioners to save $3.6 million by voting for Capriati instead of rejecting it “because a form was not submitted properly.”

Put that way, it seemed a pretty compelling argument. Except everyone else was pointing out it wasn’t legal.

Meadow Valley’s attorney, former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, himself no slouch in the big gun department, seemed to find it unbelievable the county commissioners were even considering accepting Capriati’s nonresponsive bid.

“This is nothing new,” he said, pointing out that out of four bids, Capriati was the only one without an explanation of how disadvantaged minorities would be involved. “Everyone else got it right.”

While Kaempfer had said the form was submitted the day after the bids were open, Bryan said the truth was that the complete form identifying the minority businesses involved and the money involved, wasn’t submitted until the day before the commission meeting, two and a half months after the bids were opened.

In a touch of irony, about six weeks ago, the two companies were vying for another transportation contract. Meadow Valley was the low bidder, Capriati was next lowest in line. Meadow Valley failed to submit a necessary attachment to the bid and it was tossed out as nonresponsive. Capriati won the contract.

Meadow Valley admitted its mistake and moved on. Capriati should have done the same instead of whining the forms were confusing.

When the vote was taken after way too much time spent on nitpicking the language of forms, Sisolak was the lone vote for Capriati.

Even Chris Giunchigliani abandoned him (after first agreeing with him) upon learning of the possible ramifications.

It’s one thing to be the Lone Ranger in the white hat, it’s another to dig in your heels and fail to see reason because you think a document is unclear, ignoring potential ramifications.

To save $3.6 million, Sisolak was willing to risk $30 million.

Where’s the sense in that?