When Maryland voters decided to elect Larry Hogan for Maryland governor, they didn’t just reject Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown and the ossified Maryland Democratic establishment. They also rejected that establishment’s deep ties with Xerox—a company that has been involved in Maryland politics, health care, and their ever-hated speed cameras.
Documents obtained by Watchdog Wire show business and political connections between Xerox, various units of Maryland government, and the Anthony Brown campaign. Previously, Watchdog Wire has covered Xerox and their political ties with the state establishment and Xerox’s involvement in the state health care exchange. These photos detail Xerox’s various state and local contracts, but also show that Xerox and Xerox Group President for State Enterprise Solutions Nancy Collins both donated to the Brown/Ulman gubernatorial campaign.
The first picture shows that the Xerox Political Action Committee, XPAC, donated $4,000 dollars to the Brown campaign. Nancy Collins donated $1,000. Under state campaign law, $4,000 is the maximum, and all companies that do business with the state that make donations over $500 to file disclosure reports with the state board of elections.
Document acquired by Watchdog Wire detailing Xerox contributions to the Brown campaign.
There was also a recent change to election law, taking effect in January 2015, that closes the LLC loophole that allowed owners of multiple limited liability companies to give the maximum amount to a candidate through each company they own. The new law only considers an LLC an independent entity in political giving if one person does not own more than 80 percent of the company. That loophole does not appear to apply in the Xerox case. It is interesting, however, that both XPAC and Xerox officer Nancy Collins contributed to the Brown campaign.
Xerox is not only a corporate contributor, but also a contractor for various parts of the state government. They are involved with state and local authorities in providing services for the speed cameras across the state. They were also later involved in the botched implementation of the Maryland health care exchange by Lt. Governor Brown. In fact, Xerox was hired by the state for that purpose a month after Nevada ditched their services to join the federal health care exchange.
Xerox has contracts with the state generally, and with state departments including the Office of the Comptroller, the Departments of Health, Human Resources, Labor Licensing, Information Technology, and Education, the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange, the State Highway Authority and the Maryland Transit Administration. These contracts number into the millions of dollars for a wide variety of services for these organs of government, with contracts lasting for varying amounts of time.
This document obtained by Watchdog Wire shows the duration and cost of various contracts Xerox has with a number of departments and subsidiaries of the state government.
On the county level, Xerox has contracts with Morgan State University and Baltimore, Carroll, Charles, Frederick, Howard, Prince Georges and Montgomery Counties. These contracts include a variety of traffic services and contract for the machines with whom Xerox’s name has become ubiquitous. None of these contracts reach the levels of cost attained by the various state-level contracts, but they still number into the millions of dollars.
This document obtained by Watchdog Wire shows the duration and cost of various contracts Xerox has with a number of counties in Maryland.
On the municipal level, Xerox provides traffic technology and Xerox machines. Clients include Tacoma Park, Baltimore, Baltimore Public Schools, Bowie, Frederick, Gaithersburg, Hyattsville, and Rockville. These contracts, much like the county-level contracts, have a wide variety of duration and costs, with traffic technology costing more than Xerox machines.
This document obtained by Watchdog Wire shows the duration and cost of various contracts Xerox has with a number of municipalities in Maryland.
Watchdog Wire has also acquired a list of lobbyist organizations and the lobbyists associated with Xerox. The biggest names of note are Sean Malone of Harris Jones & Malone, and his wife Lisa Harris Jones. As we noted in our article about the connection between the speed camera contracts and the health care exchange, Sean Malone and his wife have ties to current Gov. Martin O’Malley and current Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, both of whom are further associated with Lt. Gov. Brown.
Sean Malone served as chief legal counsel for Baltimore City Police and city labor commissioner during O’Malley’s term as mayor. His wife, Lisa Harris Jones, is a close personal friend of Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who officiated Malone and Jones’ wedding. Xerox first hired Harris Jones & Malone to lobby the state to adopt speed cameras.
This document obtained by Watchdog Wire shows the lobbying firms and lobbyists employed by Xerox.
Readers can reach whatever conclusions they want to reach—these documents help illustrate the close ties between Xerox, the organs of state government, and the Democratic political elites in charge of the state’s politics in Annapolis and on the local level.
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