Complaints About Adelman

Channel 27 in Madison is the station that broke the travelgate story.

They're now reporting that:

State Workers Resent Adelman Outsourcing
Some state employees have told 27 News they resent that Milwaukee's Adelman Travel Systems has used reservation agents in Tampa, Florida to book their state travel.

Sources in the travel industry have confirmed what state employees have grumbled about, and have told 27 News Adelman relies on what's called "virtual" travel agents in Tampa. Virtual agents typically work out of their homes and save a travel firm overhead costs.

The $750,000 Adelman travel contract is under federal investigation. Department of Administration contract procurement expert Georgia Thompson was indicted by a grand jury Jan. 24 for allegedly committing fraud by inflating ranking scores for Adelman and manipulating other contract evaluators.

Thompson is scheduled to appear in federal court in Milwaukee, Feb. 3.

Adelman executives contributed $20,000 to Governor Doyle's campaign in the months surrounding the contract award. While the indictment states Thompson relied on political considerations in perverting the contract process for Adelman, it makes no mention of anyone else, nor any campaign contribution.

The contract calls for Adelman to book an estimated 10,000 flights yearly for state employees.

Several state employees, who spoke to 27 News on the condition of anonymity, said their flight bookings through Adelman were sometimes handled by reservation agents in Tampa. They said these bookings occurred during regular business hours, and agents told them they only handled "overflow" calls.

Virginia-based Omega World Travel lost out on the state contract to Adelman, despite being the choice of every contract evaluator with the exception of Thompson.

Omega's Wisconsin executive, Diane Bozicevich told 27 News overflow call operations are standard in the travel industry for night and weekend bookings, but are almost unheard of during business hours. "That's not our policy," Bozicevich told 27
News.

This would have more impact on me if the complaintants would go on the record. Anonymous complaints can easily be dismissed as partisan given the current investigation. Moreover outsourcing isn't a problem as long as the company can live up to its contractual obligations.

Nevertheless, WKOW continues to pursue the story, from many different angles.

Drip. Drip. Drip...