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TGH sues State of Missouri on behalf of whistleblower demoted for raising concerns that state contracts were awarded to preferred vendor through rigged bidding process

ST. LOUIS RECORD

Friday, April 4, 2025

TGH sues State of Missouri on behalf of whistleblower demoted for raising concerns that state contracts were awarded to preferred vendor through rigged bidding process

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Law Firm | Unsplash by Tingey Injury Law Firm

A longtime state employee is accusing  Missouri officials in a new lawsuit of subverting competitive bidding  laws in order to steer lucrative technology contracts to a  well-connected company, then demoting him when he raised red flags. 

In a lawsuit filed earlier this month  in Cole County against the Missouri Office of Administration, Rodney  Rice alleges “deliberate bias” toward St. Louis-based World Wide  Technology in awarding state IT contracts.

World Wide Technology is one of the largest privately-held companies  in the country. It was founded by David Steward, a prolific Missouri  political donor who has contributed $2.3 million to mostly Republican  campaigns over the last decade. 

The company has been paid $53 million by the state over the last two years. 

The state gave World Wide Technology  numerous unfair advantages over its competitors, Rice alleges in his  lawsuit, violating state procurement law and exposing the state to  potential liability if anyone found out. 

When he brought his concerns to his supervisors, Rice says he was admonished for being an “obstructionist” and demoted.

Rebecca Morrison, a spokeswoman for  World Wide Technology, said in an emailed statement that the company “is  committed to a fair procurement process and upholds the highest ethical  standards.”

The Office of Administration did not respond to a request for comment. 

After 20 years in state government,  Rice says in his lawsuit that he was appointed in March 2023 as director  of the Enterprise Project Management Office, which oversees various IT  projects and the contractors to whom they are awarded. 

Rice believed one of his key  responsibilities in the new role was to “ensure that the various  agencies in state government followed the state’s procurement  regulations and procedures to ensure well-connected vendors did not  receive an unfair advantage over their competitors.”

Shortly after taking the job, he says  he “began to suspect a deliberate bias toward (World Wide Technology)  in the state’s IT contracts.” Specifically, the lawsuit says Rice grew  concerned when he realized a former World Wide Technology employee was  leading the State Data Center, which awarded numerous projects to the  company. 

World Wide Technology won “a majority  of the state’s ‘infrastructure’ contracts even in cases where it did  not submit the lowest bid,” Rice alleges. “In fact, (the company) had  been awarded one contract even though it had submitted the highest bid,  which was millions of dollars more than the bids from other approved  vendors.”

Though Missouri has rules permitting the selection of “clearly inferior bids,” the lawsuit states,  “none of those rules had been followed in the case of (World Wide Technology).”

Rice says his concerns were  heightened when he learned the state provided a current employee of  World Wide Technology key card access to an office in the Truman State  Office Building in Jefferson City, a privilege he says no other vendors  are provided.

He later learned the state was using  World Wide Technology contractors to work on the preparation of a new  project that had not yet been put out to bid, “which would give (World  Wide Technology) an unfair advantage in the bidding process.”

He first raised his concerns in  January 2024, the lawsuit says, and was told by a superior that the  state’s IT infrastructure was “not sufficiently decentralized and could  be irreparably destroyed in the event of a catastrophic failure.” 

“To prevent the legislature and the  public from learning just how vulnerable the state’s computer networks  were,” Rice alleges, state leaders decided to bend procurement rules to  award World Wide Technology the project “to ensure that the system was  updated as quickly as possible.”

A month later, Rice says World Wide  Technology was allowed to change the terms of a project after it had  already been sent out to vendors for competitive bids. World Wide  Technology would be paid for time and materials regardless of whether it  met benchmarks laid out in the project proposal that was previously  provided to its competitors. 

Concerned that awarding the contract  to World Wide Technology based on “far more favorable terms” would  likely violate state law, Rice says he spoke to the Office of  Administration’s legal department for advice. 

He says he was advised by the  agency’s attorneys to stop the entire bid process and reissue a revised  request to ensure that all vendors had a fair chance at winning the bid.

But that was later overruled by his  supervisor, who Rice alleges told him to let the bid process proceed  unabated without notice to the other vendors. 

The next month, Rice says his  supervisor informed him his department “has become too black and white  when it comes to contracts and many IT leaders see us as an obstruction  and slow them down.” He was given a choice of accepting demotion or  being placed on a performance improvement plan, which he understood  would have led to his dismissal “after sufficient time to paper his  file.”

Calling the decision a “Hobson choice,” Rice says he “accepted” a demotion and a pay cut on April 16, 2024.

Rice’s lawsuit alleges he was  punished for “disclosing violations of state procurement law, regulation  and policy that exposed the State of Missouri to potential liability in  the tens of millions of dollars.”

Original source can be found here.

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