VIRGINIA – A decision to designate the Cook News Herald as ISD 2142’s official newspaper despite an extraordinarily low bid by a competitor has raised questions about the manner in which the bids were handled.

“This whole situation smells,” said Timberjay Publisher Marshall Helmberger. “We put in a ridiculously low bid, much lower than the Cook News Herald has bid in years. We did it in part to make a point about how administrators in the district play favorites. Instead, it’s even worse than we thought.”

The Timberjay submitted a bid of 69 cents per column inch for legals, well below the Cook News Herald’s bid of $1.05 per column inch. Despite that, Business Manager Kim Johnson told board members during their reorganizational meeting on Monday that the Cook News Herald bid was two cents a column inch cheaper than the Timberjay’s.

Johnson had no documentation to support the claim at the meeting, since she did not provide copies of the bids to the board, as is typical practice. She also failed to supply the Timberjay with copies of the bids by the paper’s deadline, despite numerous requests for the public information.

School Board Chairman Bob Larson acknowledged that the lack of documentation did concern him. In the past, bids from all the newspapers were included in board members’ packets so they could see the comparisons.

Some board members had received an emailed copy of the Timberjay’s bid and questioned if the Cook News Herald’s bid was actually cheaper. Johnson assured them that it was.

It also appears that the district did not solicit any bids but was initially given a bid orally by Cook News Herald publisher Gary Albertson. When the Timberjay submitted a written bid on Friday, Johnson contacted Albertson by phone to tell him he would have to submit a bid in writing to the board.

Larson said he was unaware of the process used in soliciting bids, but said the district should be seeking bids from the widest field possible to ensure fair competition. “We need to be more transparent in our bidding process if we’re going to be fair,” he said.

Helmberger said the phone call gave Albertson an unfair advantage to influence the bidding, arguing that because his newspaper’s columns are wider, his bid was actually lower. Johnson, in an email to the Timberjay on Wednesday, used this argument to justify her claims to the board.

In fact, Johnson’s claim was false because it failed to account for other differences that weighed in favor of the Timberjay’s bid. While comparisons of newspaper quotes can be complicated, a formula was developed years ago and is widely used by governmental bodies in Minnesota to determine low bids. “If you run the two bids through the standard formula, the Timberjay’s is cheaper by nearly 20 percent,” said Helmberger. (see related inset box in print edition)

Helmberger said he has no intention of asking the board to reconsider its decision. “What’s done is done for this year,” he said. Helmberger acknowledged that the school district has the right to go with a higher bid, but that public bodies are not supposed to do so without sound reasons, such as higher circulation in the case of newspapers. In this case, noted Helmberger, the Timberjay has nearly three times the number of paid subscribers in the district as the Cook News Herald, so circulation would not be a justification for accepting a higher bid from the Cook News Herald.

In a letter providing the Timberjay’s bid, manager Jodi Summit stated that the low bid also recognized the district’s difficult finances.

“At a time when the district faces extraordinary financial challenges, I am certain that the school board will want to do everything possible to take advantage of this extremely competitive rate,” wrote Summit.