‘A well-thought-out scheme’: Orange County lawmakers claim corruption with county’s contracts with IT company

State Sen. James Skoufis and several Orange County lawmakers are alleging that the county government entered into illegal contracts with an information technology company in order to enrich the family of a top-ranking county official — and that county administrators have attempted to cover up what the lawmakers say is a larger corruption scheme.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Skoufis, a Cornwall Democrat who chairs the Senate’s investigations committee, laid out the case that contracts between the county and StarCIO totaling $823,000 for information technology services and consulting were illegally procured and inflated to enrich Isaac Sacolick, the company’s proprietor and the brother-in-law of county Human Resources Commissioner Langdon Chapman.

Among the most serious charges voiced by the lawmakers is that two proposals from other technology companies were concocted to make it falsely appear as if the county sought competitive bids before awarding its initial contract to StarCIO.

Skoufis and the legislators also claimed that costs for StarCIO’s services have been improperly inflated via renewals of the initial $65,000 contract signed in January. Subsequent contracts have funneled more than a half-million dollars to the company, they said.

“To be very clear, I and we are alleging that absolutely laws were broken here,” Skoufis said. “This wasn’t some loophole that was taken advantage of.”

Skoufis said the information will be shared with “at least” the state attorney general’s office, the Orange County district attorney’s office and the FBI. He also said the state comptroller’s office was “monitoring” Wednesday’s press conference.