THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Not that old AM/FM in your car dash, but the two way communicators used by governmental agencies like fire and police. Somewhere along the way, various purchasing agencies started showing a decided bias for products from Motorola, despite prices as much as 10 times more than equally capable competitors.

A notice circulated by Alameda County to gauge vendors’ interest in the project said that the first $5.7 million phase must include a master controller made by Motorola Inc., and the equipment must connect with the county’s aged, proprietary Motorola SmartNet II system.

In other words, “it was already a done deal. . . . Nobody else could make their equipment compatible with soon-to-be-obsolete Motorola equipment” – nobody except Motorola, said Steve Overacker, who was Contra Costa County’s telecommunications manager at the time.

Any appearance that there would be a fair, competitive bidding process “was a ruse,” he said in a phone interview.

Chalk up another contract win for the Schaumburg, Ill.-based Goliath of the public safety communications industry, a company that for decades has ruled a market financed entirely by taxpayers and now totaling billions of dollars a year. For Motorola Solutions Inc., as it has been known since 2011, the value of this California contract would snowball toward $100 million.

Such outcomes have come to be expected for the company that has long led the way in two-way radio technology, even as the nation went on a post-9/11 spending binge on emergency communication. However, a seven-month McClatchy investigation found that, in one region after another, city, county and state officials also have favored Motorola, helping the firm secure an estimated 80 percent of all the emergency telecommunications business in America.

From the nation’s capital to the Pacific Coast, government officials have handed the company noncompetitive contracts, used modifications of years-old contracts to acquire new systems or crafted bid specifications to Motorola’s advantage. These officials, perhaps without recognizing their collective role, have helped stunt the very competition that’s needed to hold down prices and assure the most efficient use of government dollars.

The company’s contract wins have been clouded by irregularities or allegations of government favoritism in Chicago, Dallas, the San Francisco Bay Area and on statewide systems in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas and Washington, to name a few. Losing bidders often have been left chafing with the belief that they weren’t playing on a level field...

In a weakly policed but humongous patchwork of as many as 20,000 city, county, state and federal two-way radio networks, governments have paid as much as $7,500 apiece for Motorola models, when some competitors offered products meeting the same specifications for a fraction of its prices. In Europe, albeit with a lower-power network that requires more costly towers and infrastructure, police radios serving the same functions sell for $500 to $700.

“While our public safety people do an extraordinary job in protecting the public, I am not impressed with the choices they’ve made relative to technology,” said veteran Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, who represents part of Silicon Valley and has for years monitored Motorola’s dominance with chagrin.

In a phone interview, she called “ludicrous” radio prices of $5,000 and above.

Surprising that the McClatchy investigation hasn't uncovered any "grease" exchanging hands to smooth these contracts. In local fields like this, most of the locals are too unsophisticated to not ask for it. Or did they? Read the several articles posted on this matter to get the full story.