At the beginning of 2016, a project for the construction of new and economical LED lighting in the central part of Blagoevgrad started. But the price of the system grew by over BGN 400,000 before its commissioning.
This story begins with a resolution of the Municipal Council in the city, which allows the local administration to withdraw a loan from “Municipal Bank” amounting to nearly BGN 1.9 million for the realization of the project. “The credit will be paid with the savings from the energy used” then the mayor of the city Atanas Kambitov said. And the estimates indicated that the saved money would be 120 thousand BGN per year. The realization of the project had to allow on-line and real-time monitoring of the consumption and the occurrence of accidents.
Some unforeseen costs
The initial value of the contract, dated December 2015, was slightly above BGN 1.8 million, VAT included. A year and a half later it turned out that unforeseen costs had arisen and the contractor – the company under the Obligations and Contracts Act “Consortium LED Light 2015”, represented by Konstantin Obetsanov, needs additional funds in the amount of over BGN 433,000, VAT included, for the construction of the system. The amount of the overpayment had to be provided by a change in the amount of debt already taken. Thus, the cost of the project reached nearly BGN 2.3 mln, VAT included. And this automatically questioned the fulfillment of the price criterion when selecting a contractor for the procurement.
To make the additional payment, a new decision was made by the Blagoevgrad Municipal Council to delegate rights to Mayor Kambitov. It was only then that the additional agreement to the main contract with “LED light 2015” had to be concluded. But it turned out that it happened two months before the council’s decision. More importantly, a month before the decision was made, the amount had already been paid out. In other words, the Municipality of Blagoevgrad has paid almost half a million leva to the contractor, before discussing it with the counselors at all and before being sure that they will accept the change and the amendment to the contract.
First we pay first, then we think
“Pro Veritas” requested information under the Access to Public Information Act to clarify when exactly the Additional Agreement was signed and when the amount was paid to the Contractor. By a letter from the beginning of August this year, we received an answer that doesn’t clarify the things but on the contarry – tangled additionally the case.
From the answer received it becomes clear that without a sanction of the City Council in the city, the Additional Agreement to the main contract for the construction of the LED lighting in Blagoevgrad between the contractor and the municipality was signed on June 6-th and the payment was made exactly a month later. The formal justification for this was the final completion of the construction and assembly works on the project.
However, at a regular session at the end of June, municipal councilors in Blagoevgrad unexpectedly rejected the proposal for an additional agreement and the payment made on it. So the mayor of the city was forced to look for a way out of the absurd situation in which, without the permission of the City Council, the additional agreement was already a fact and the money on it paid.
Today “con”, tomorrow – “pro”
Purusant to the Council’s Rules of Procedure, if the Council rejects a proposal, it can be filed for voting not earlier than six months. But it turned out that this is not a must either. At the end of July this year, just a month after the first waiver of the counselors, the proposal was again put to the vote. The surprise is that for this time some of the counselors changed their minds, and this time they voted pro. Thus the mayor’s proposal was accepted – completely formal and post-factum. Between the two votes, the proposal was supplemented in its expert part with the explanation that the pillars of the lighting were corroded at their basis, that there was no concrete foundation and a number of faults, defined as “unforeseen circumstances”, were discovered.
Such a conclusion is surprising since yet when developing the project and its assessment, a survey should have been performed and all “circumstances” should had been foreseen.
There was also a third surprise – between the two votes, the amount needed for the additional payment was reduced by BGN 90,000. During the month between the two votes, the administration of Atanas Kambitov found out that the withdrawn loan was left with unspent exactly BGN 90,000.
Who guards the guards?
The institution in Blagoevgrad, which according to the Law on Local Self-Government and Local Administration should control the lawfulness of the actions of the Municipal Councils, to return their decisions for further consideration and compliance with the national legislation, is the district governor, Biser Mihailov. After the decision of the Municipal Council was once rejected, it was his duty to return it after the re-vote had taken place earlier than the statutory term – “not earlier than 6 months”.
But that has not happened either.
Mihailov’s explanation is that his legal team has judged the decision not to be returned because it is “a new solution that has nothing to do with the previous one.”
Such a ground, of course, is too controversial. Nevertheless, the facts of the payment by the administration of Atanas Kambitov remain unquestionable, before a decision has been made by the Blagoevgrad Municipal Council. The unexplained shifting of the position of the councilors in the re-vote of its legalization. But also the fact of the gaps in the accounting accuracy of the local administration, which, between two meetings of the Municipal Council in the city finds that it has made a mistake for … BGN 90 thousand.
* For this text the author Marieta Dimitrova received first prize in the category “Economics” of the contest for pure journalism “Web Repоrt“
