An embattled Los Angeles fire and police pensions commissioner accused of ethics violations by a law enforcement union over a $3 million contract to test unvaccinated city employees for COVID-19 began lobbying Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office nearly a year ago on behalf of his company, raising questions from critics about potential influence peddling, emails obtained by the Southern California News Group reveal.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League is suing the city and demanding an investigation, alleging it failed to disclose that testing contractor PPS Health Inc., doing business as Bluestone Safe, is partly owned by Dr. Pedram Salimpour, who was reappointed by Garcetti to the pension commission in 2017.
“Did commissioner Salimpour mislead his commissioner-colleagues and the professional staff as to just how involved he was and how much he stood to gain with this taxpayer-funded contract? asked Tom Saggau, a spokesman for the union. “We all deserve answers.”
The union lawsuit seeks to block the city from requiring unvaccinated employees to pay for COVID-19 tests through payroll deductions at a cost of $65 per test. A hearing is scheduled for Dec. 8.
Bluestone among 7 firms vetted
The Los Angeles Personnel Department said it vetted seven vendors with vaccine and testing tracking services before awarding the no-bid, emergency contract to Bluestone to test city employees. With the exception of Bluestone, the other vendors were not identified.
Bluestone was the only company that offered a variety of services at a competitive rate, including vaccine card verification, daily symptom monitoring, a PCR saliva test, vaccine exemptions submission and tracking, and health services counseling, Bruce Whidden. a spokesman for the Personnel Department, said in an email.
“The services of Bluestone Safe have a proven success record with other area governments, including Los Angeles County and several Native American tribes,” he added.
Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions, which manages more than $30 billion in assets and administers retirement and health benefits for nearly 27,000 current and retired public safety employees and their beneficiaries, said last month Salimpour was “not engaged nor part of the review and vetting process” for the Bluestone contract.
That improbable explanation raises questions about whether Salimpour may have manipulated the pension commission, Saggau said.
“The public deserves to know why the pension commission released an official statement that downplayed commissioner Salimpour’s ownership and management control of Bluestone, as well as stating that Salimpour was not engaged and had no role in the process to gain the contract,” he added. “Why would a city entity defend the profit-focused actions of an individual?”
Bluestone issued a statement saying it has done nothing wrong. “Bluestone sought out and followed legal advice and complied with all applicable ethics laws,” a spokesperson for the company said. “The allegations made by Los Angeles Police Protective League are simply false.”
Emails and influence
The police union provided the Southern California News Group emails showing Salimpour and Bluestone lobbyist Darryl Lucien began courting Garceti’s office in late 2020 for an opportunity to provide COVID-19 testing.
Lucien touted Bluestone’s services and Salimpour’s credentials with the Los Angeles County Medical Association in a Nov. 23 introductory email to Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Jeff Gorell and Amanda Daflos, who at the time was the city’s chief innovation officer.
“I am working with a company, PPS Health, that has developed a robust health app that manages the risks of COVID-19 exposure, and also offers telemedicine and COVID-testing capabilities,” he said in the email. “It is developed by two prominent medical doctors in Los Angeles, one of which previously served as the president of the Los Angeles County Medical Association.”
The email says Bluestone will facilitate the creation of safer public spaces in city facilities and lower exposure to COVID-19 workers’ compensation claims through a saliva test that provides highly accurate results within 24 to 36 hours. “We are hoping to have a discussion with you sometime in the near future,” Lucien said concluding the email.
The next day Salimpour followed up with another email pitch to Gorell and Daflos.
“As Darryl mentioned we have been involved in clinical operations for large scale and very large scale operations throughout the United States for over two decades,” Salimpour said. “We would love to speak with you about how we partner, work with, and work for Los Angeles in this endeavor. This obviously happens to be near and dear to my heart because this is where I live and grew up and where all of our staff are so if there is any way that we can be helpful, it will be incredible for me personally.”
In a Dec. 9 email, Dr. Pejman Salimpour, who is Pedram Salimpour’s brother and partner at Bluestone, thanked Daflos and Andre Herndon, who is Garcetti’s deputy communications director, for speaking with him the previous day and provided them a copy of a Bluestone presentation. “We are available at your pleasure to continue our conversation,” he said.
Lucien then sent a final follow-up email on Jan 12, 2021 to “Team Garcetti.”
“Our company is able to offer this program for minimal costs to city employees because of our ability to bill employees’ insurers,” he said. “Depending on contract terms, such as indemnification, and administrative requirements, we may need to charge a variable startup rate. We are hopeful to contribute to reducing the transmission of COVID-19 among the city’s workforce soon. Please let us know very soon whether your interest remains?”
Lucien declined to comment on the emails and Garcetti’s office referred questions to the Personnel Department.
The emails raise serious questions about Salimpour’s efforts to secure the Bluestone contract, said Craig Lally, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League.
“The revelations in these emails confirm that Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension Commissioner Pedram Salimpour used his considerable political influence to personally engage in an aggressive lobbying campaign aimed at the highest echelons of Mayor Garcetti’s office to successfully land a lucrative, no-bid contract for his COVID-19 testing start-up company, Bluestone,” he said.
“The public deserves to know who was pulling the strings to funnel a $3 million no-bid contract to perform Covid testing to an entity that doesn’t own a Covid testing lab, doesn’t produce Covid testing kits and has virtually zero experience managing a pandemic related mass public health effort. Who else in city government, besides the mayor’s office, was involved, who else was lobbied to award this contract to the newly formed Bluestone and its city-commissioner owner?”
Statistics and logistics
The controversy involving Salimpour has prompted at least one COVID-19 testing company to weigh in.
Newport Beach-based Vivera Pharmaceuticals announced Friday it will offer free COVID-19 testing to all Southern California first responders and their families.
“There is no reason to force first responders to pay for testing in order to keep their jobs,” Vivera Chief Executive Office Paul Edalat said in a statement. “We are committed to doing our part in this pandemic, and that does not mean profiting off the backs of those who serve our communities.”
The city has said it won’t accept third-party tests.
As of last week, at least 3,305 unvaccinated Los Angeles Police Department employees required twice-weekly COVID-19 testing, according to an internal memo from Deputy Chief Daniel Randolph to Police Chief Michel Moore obtained by the Southern California News Group. That means LAPD test sites have to distribute and collect more than 6,600 test kits weekly.
Testing by Bluestone was scheduled to begin Monday, Nov. 15. However, the Los Angeles Personnel Department, in an email sent to employees Friday, said the start date has been delayed. No reason was given for the delay and a new start date was not announced.
The delay marks the second postponement of testing, which originally was slated to begin Nov. 8.
Under Los Angeles’ employee vaccination mandate, workers have until Dec. 18 to get vaccinated or apply for a religious or medical exemption. Those who refuse to comply risk termination, city officials have said. Even with that requirement, testing will continue for employees who apply for an exemption until a ruling is made on those requests, which police union officials say could take months.
