At no point have I EVER made such an accusation. To be clear, I have consistently focused on the violation of our by laws (which cover the simple appearance of conflict) by the fact that Robert voted on the selection of a vendor whose sales person he met through the Tinder dating app. At no point have I accused Robert of wrong doing in his actual business arrangements he has made with her (or anyone else).
And to be clear Robert has admitted publicly on Talk to the basic facts. He met this women through Tinder, discovered she worked for Cintas, a company that supplied items he was seeking to purchase for DMS and made the deal. To be clear, again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this part of the issue. Where I have kept repeating, the problem is that he then failed to recuse himself during the board meeting where the purchase was authorized. Since the were more then four votes, his vote was not needed to pass, but it showed a problem with adhering to our by laws and more importantly (since our conflict by law also mirrors state law) State law.
What I found even more disturbing, and why I have repeatedly brought this issue up, is that Robert still insists that he did nothing wrong. I suspect that he is referring to the thought that he didn’t do anything illicit in selecting this particular company, but the ‘wrong’ was related to our conflict of interest–which again only requires the appearance of conflict. It is clear that he misunderstands the crux of my concern here in his own post, where he claims I am complaining about some conspiracy. Which I have attempted repeatedly to make clear I am not.
The issue is a failure to comply with our by laws
which has caused me even more concern since this was not an isolated incident. The FACT is that Robert had voted on the approval of funds to PSK, our current accounting firm, on repeated occasions. He once worked for this firm, a prior relationship that clearly represents a conflict of interest. This includes the selection of PSK to be our accountant last summer (June board meeting), where for the first time he did recuse himself from the vote. But he had a further conflict in that he acted as a primary point of contact with the firm, without informing Ken, the chair of the finance committee of his prior relationship with the firm.
Again he focuses on WHO selected this firm and ignores that the conflict was in his voting on the allocation of funds to pay them to do our taxes several times in years past.
The impropriety that Robert has committee in any of these events, as far as I even have reason to suspect, is the simple and admitted violation of the conflict of interest by law and State law (of which our by law mirrors the language). These conflict of interest laws exist for very good reasons, and unless we develop a culture to follow them religiously, some potential future board member (or other officer of the corporation) will use our laxity in following to commit much more serious violations such as stealing or embezzling our funds.
Finally, I applaud Robert’s several recusals this year, including do so for this years authorization of hiring PSK as our accountant, despite his apparent belief that he was doing nothing wrong before. We need to establish a culture of strict adherence to the law and our bylaws in order to protect DMS from potential unscrupulous persons who may be attracted to our ever growing revenue stream.