The Office of State Procurement has rejected one of two protests of the office's intent to award a five-year, $34.5 million marketing contract for the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery to CJRW.
In a letter to attorney Alex Gray dated Friday, procurement office Director Edward Armstrong wrote that the Ghidotti-Vines partnership, comprised of Ghidotti Communications and Vines Media, "does not appear to have been aggrieved." Gray, representing the partnership, filed the protest in mid-December.
Gray argued that, because competitor CJRW failed to disclose in writing its conflict of interest in representing Oaklawn Racing and Gaming, the lottery's advertising contract should be awarded to Ghidotti-Vines, which received the second-highest score from the evaluation committee that reviewed proposals from three advertising companies.
In his letter to Gray, Armstrong doesn't mention the conflict-of-interest complaint, writing instead that Ghidotti-Vines' proposal fails to meet requirements of the procurement office's request for qualifications.
"Most importantly, Ghidotti-Vines does not even appear to exist as an entity," Armstrong said in the three-page letter.
"Instead, the submission that was submitted under the name Ghidotti-Vines appears to have been the joint submission of two legally distinct entities, Ghidotti Communications LLC ... and Vines Media LLC ... which contracted with each other for the purpose of submitting a response to the RFQ [request for qualifications]," Armstrong said.
Armstrong said the joint Ghidotti-Vines submission doesn't identify a single contractor as the prime contractor and doesn't conform with Sections 1.14 (A) and (B) of the request for qualifications.
"I also could not locate information in the submitted proposal that was responsive to Section 1.14 (C) of the [request for qualifications] which requires the response to completely define the roles, responsibilities, duties and obligations of each contractor individually," Armstrong wrote.
"Because Ghidotti and Vines submitted a joint response and the submission fails to conform to the material requirements of 1.14 (A), 1.14 (b) and 1.14 (C) for joint responses, neither Ghidotti nor Vines timely submitted a conforming response," Armstrong said.
"Accordingly, the response of Ghidotti-Vines is ineligible for further consideration. Consequently neither Ghidotti nor Vines can show that, but for the facts complained in its protest, Ghidotti-Vines would be awarded the contract," he wrote in his letter to Gray.
Ghidotti President Natalie Ghidotti said Tuesday that "our attorneys heard from Edward Armstrong, director of Office of State Procurement, late Friday afternoon, that our protest was not sustained."
"We are in disagreement on the issues pertaining to our legal entity addressed by Mr. Armstrong and will be determining next steps," she said in a written statement.
"As a finalist in this [request for proposal] process, we expected that our specific protest of a conflict of interest with CJRW would be addressed, and it wasn't, which is disappointing at best."
CJRW consultant Gray Heathcott said Tuesday afternoon that "we have not been notified by [the procurement office] regarding a ruling on either of the protests."
"Even so, until we have an effective contract in place with the lottery, CJRW will continue to honor the 'no comment' position that was imposed upon all three of the finalist[s] for that account," Heathcott said in a written statement.
When the lottery contract was previously available, CJRW passed on seeking the work because it was viewed internally as a conflict of interest with its client work for Oaklawn Racing and Gaming in Hot Springs. Officials with CJRW and Oaklawn said last year that they did not consider there to be a conflict.
After Ghidotti-Vines filed its protest, attorney Jane Duke filed a protest on behalf of Mangan Holcomb Partners, asking that its competitors for the lottery contract be disqualified.
Mangan Holcomb said that because CJRW did not disclose in writing its work for Oaklawn, it should be disqualified, and that Ghidotti-Vines should be disqualified because the entity is not registered as a business with the secretary of state's office and thus not authorized to do business in the state.
Jake Bleed, a spokesman for the state Department of Finance and Administration, said Tuesday that Armstrong hasn't issued a ruling yet on the Mangan Holcomb protest.
When asked about Armstrong's ruling in the protest by Ghidotti-Vines partnership, Sharon Vogelpohl, president of Mangan Holcomb Partners, said Tuesday afternoon that "I cannot comment, as we have not received any information or updates from procurement since before the holiday."
CJRW currently holds the marketing contract with the state Department of Parks and Tourism. That state account, worth about $15 million annually, will be open for bids in March.
CJRW was recently awarded the Arkansas Economic Development Commission contract for public relations and branding.
Mangan Holcomb currently holds the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery contract and also represents the Department of Arkansas Heritage. It also recently secured the digital portion of the state contract with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission through its subsidiary, Team SI.
Business on 01/04/2017