In today’s Oregonian Scott Learn reports that the David Douglas School District board selected the Rommel Architectural Partnership as its “district architect”. Terry Rommel, one of the firm’s two principals, is married to the school district’s superintendent.
Is this OK?
Rommel Architectural Partnership has already done lots of work for the district, so this isn’t necessarily a new question. The selection process happening recently is really just a renewal of a partnership between Rommel and the district that began in 2001 after a bond measure passed.
And Barbara Rommel, the superintendent, was not at all involved in the selection process. And when Rommell Architectual Partnership was selected in 2001, state ethics officials told The Oregonian that there was no conflict of interest as long as that separation remained.
But still.
I’m not asking if this constitutes an official breach of ethics. The firm and the district are not doing anything formally wrong at all. But I wonder if somehow there’s at least a threat to the integrity of both architect and client.
In my view, merely the fact that we’re having this conversation is an uncomfortable one.
In the article from today’s paper, one of the other finalists for the contract, Randy Saunders of RSS Architecture, said there were no hard feelings about the selection. Saunders focused on the fact that the David Douglas district was sticking with an architect it had already worked with – and that is very, very common.
But Saunders’s final quote in the article goes as follows:
“My only revelation was when I saw there were only three proposals submitted. I said, ‘Oops, everybody else knew the situation and said they didn’t want to bother.”
Does that sound to you like a selection process that is beyond reproach?
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