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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Same stuff, different day

Looked funny and smelled bad before the explanations, looks funny and smells bad after the explanations:

Fort Wayne Controller Pat Roller came to Tuesday night's City Council meeting to explain a $285,000 contract the city quietly signed with a company co-founded by former Mayor Graham Richard.

After an hour or so, council members ran out of questions, but not all came around to endorsing the deal or the way it was slipped in in December, at the close of Richard's second term in office.

Roller said continuing Richard's eight years of government efficiency and cost savings was so urgent that she felt compelled to cut the contract with the High-Performance Government Network, which fell just below the financial threshold that requires City Council's approval.

On the other hand, the "expertise" the city didn't want to lose was the operation of Six Sigma, which promises practices that promote government "efficiency." The contract entered into was for $95,000 a year instead of $100,000, which would have required council approval. And it was done in the waning days of the Richard aministration -- no need to bother the incoming mayor with the pesky details of something he has to live with for three years. Certainly was efficient!

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