Prepaid Invoices And Contract Negotiations With Bob Sweeney

Three more documents today - two emails that shed light on the role Bob Sweeney played in negotiating the Forefront Organizing contract, and an invoice that shows prepayment - despite a contract that lists thirty day deliverables. 

Bob Sweeney Works For Big River Ambulance

The first email discusses a board meeting with Forefront, and says "I assume you have a boiler plate contract similar to that which you provided to Big River Ambulance when you worked with them.  Since we have the same attorney that should be simple to get out of the way."

The email is written to Mike Dalton.  There is no mention of POWER Union doing the work. It's entirely possible that Chief Mayer, Sheriff Boyer, and other members of the board were unaware it was the intention of Mike Dalton to subcontract POWER for all of their work.

And that brings us to the second document - the invoice for February.  Once again, the invoice is paid prior to the work to be performed.  A check is written out on January 14th for the full amount of $70,024.92. This check was later voided and split into two checks after a board vote on January 15th, but the full amount was paid by January 23rd.

Forefront Organizing FeburaryInvoice

This invoice also has the identifying number, PWR-JCD-03.  When compared, to other invoices, we see PWR-JCD ## lists all five invoices.  We can rightly see that PWR stands for Power Union.  From the beginning, Forefront intended for POWER to do the bulk of the work.  The identifying invoice number proves what we already know - the Jefferson County Dispatch thought they were working with Forefront as represented by Terry Meadows and Mike Dalton, and yet other people were doing the actual work.

How much of this did Bob Sweeney know?  And what did he disclose to the board prior to their working on the campaign?  This ties in with the third document, where Sweeney is negotiating the payment terms of the contract. 

Sweeney here says payment terms should be 30 days, not three days. And yet in every case, the invoice is paid ahead of time, not only for work performed in the future, but immediately after being issued.

Robert Sweeney Negotiating Payment Terms

In fact, based on an email from Mike Dalton - a failure to pre-pay the December invoice of over $40,000 put the campaign behind.  Forefront seems to not be able to perform any work unless it is paid ahead of time.  That's normal for a lot of small businesses, especially ones that have no employees or working capital.

What is not normal is a contract approved for up to $200,000 to such a company.  Once again, we're left to wonder who vouched for Forefront Organizing to get such a big contract.  Must be nice to have those kinds of friends in your back pocket.  In the worst economic times in generations, a campaign to a business that doesn't officially exist in the state of Missouri must have some powerful sales ability to get paid upfront for business it seems in some cases never to have performed.

Comments

[Josh]

boy oh boy.........

I wish I could find generous cutomers like that......