A controversial proposal to create a research center to help Boulder County gradually remove GMO crops from county-owned farm lands may have to be scrapped for a second time amid claims that the county has mishandled the bids.

An attorney for area farmers, who has been critical of the process, on Thursday sent a letter to county commissioners requesting that they invalidate a bid from Colorado State University, on the ground that an employee helped shape the contract on which the university is now bidding.

“The situation is hard to salvage at this point,” said Louis Toro, director of Colorado Ethics Watch. “The best course would be to vacate the deadline (and) start over from scratch.”

An original request for proposals (RFP) issued last February was thrown out after the commissioners determined neither of the two proposals received met the requirements. Prior to that decision, however, critics alleged the commissioners were rigging the deal to ensure a pro-organic research institute would run the center.

In addition, after the initial request for proposals was issued, a search of county emails revealed that CSU extension agent Adrian Card, helped write the proposal. In public procurement, it’s considered unethical for a bidder to have had a role in writing an RFP because it would give that bidder an unfair advantage.

CSU co-bid on the first round and is sponsoring a current, solo bid for the redone RFP, issued in July. The second entity competing for the contract is the Western Sugar Cooperative, a collective of sugar beet farmers throughout Colorado and neighboring states.

Card maintains he did not help draft the revised request, and emails show he attempted to remove himself from the process. But a comparison of the two RFPs by the Daily Camera and Times-Call indicates that they are almost identical.

That’s “definitely an issue” ethically, said Toro, adding that Card’s admitted involvement in writing the first RFP could open the county up to a potential lawsuit.

To save the program, “they need to do a third” RFP, he said. “Start over.”

But even the bidders have raised questions about the county’s ability to handle the bidding process and the eventual research center. Both CSU and Western Sugar have criticized staff and elected leaders, with the latter calling the commissioners’ expectations for the program unrealistic.

Thursday, the commissioners delayed a meeting to hear staff’s recommendations on who would best facilitate the removal of GMO crops from county land. The choices: A well-respected university whose employee had a hand in crafting the RFP, or a collective of farmers whose main product and area of expertise is a genetically engineered sugar beet.

Conflicts of interest

The first RFP for the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Innovation Initiative (SARII) was put out on Feb. 2, 2017, after months of discussion. Three months earlier, county commissioners voted 2-1 to amend the cropland policy to discontinue the practice of growing GMO crops on public open space land entirely by 2021.

Nearly 2,000 acres will be affected: 1,363 acres of corn and 605 acres of sugar beets, just a small fraction of the 16,000 total acres of active cropland the county owns and leases back to farmers. SARII was proposed as a way to help those farmers transition.

In a letter to the Camera’s editorial board, the commissioners said they and county staff “sought ideas” from entities that would eventually become bidders but defended their process as “transparent, fair, and shaped by abundant public input.”

One of those organizations was the Rodale Institute, a Pennsylvania nonprofit whose stated mission is to advance organic farming. Rodale bid on the first proposal, in partnership with Colorado State University — another entity the commissioners consulted before writing the RFP.

Apart from concerns over bias, area farmers worried that Rodale’s focus would result in research biased toward organic methods and crops. Rodale did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Complaints were also lodged about the role of CSU extension agent Adrian Card, in drafting the RFP. While acknowledging the conflict, Card said he felt his previous work at two agricultural research stations qualified him to offer input.

“My sense was it would have been a disservice had I not been there to offer some thoughts on what this could look like,” Card said, adding that the “final cut” came from Eric Lane, director of Boulder County’s Parks and Open Space.

Farmers losing faith

CSU is the sole sponsor of its current proposal; Rodale did not partner on the revised RFP, issued in July. The university contemplated Rodale as a co-sponsor but ultimately decided against it, according to Jessica Davis, head of the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture.

CSU officials declined repeated requests for interviews. Davis said, via email, that Rodale could collaborate with the university in the future in some capacity. CSU’s proposal, which it shared with the Camera and Times-Call, indicates that it will “enlist and utilize our current collaborations” with “research institutions, government agencies and NGOs” and “tap into existing and future networks” of various nonprofit agencies.

Famuer Rasmussen, a farmer who leases open space land, said he is OK with Rodale’s involvement as long as they don’t attempt to influence the entire project with pro-organic views.

If every consulting partner “has their own little piece,” he approves, Rasmussen said. But if Rodale “were in total control, I’m absolutely against it. Absolutely.”

Others have less confidence. Scott Miller, of Rock Creek Farm, said neither CSU or Rodale engaged local farmers during either bid process, as the Western Sugar Cooperative did.

“CSU has done some great research,” Miller said, “but it bothers me that nobody has come to the farmers in Boulder County and said, ‘We’d like you to be involved in this.'”

Miller, as a member of the Parks and Open Space advisory committee, pushed for the research program, but felt that the county’s RFP — and the bids that followed — put too much emphasis on teaching farmers how to employ organic practices when, in his opinion, it should have been about conducting the research to determine the most sustainable methods of farming, environmentally and economically.

“Organic will absolutely be a big part of that research,” he said. “If you can find and prove there’s a better option for us, we’ll all get in line and follow you.

“But telling us that what we’re doing is wrong and not being able to show us something better is the way it’s always been.”

Bidders criticize county

The bidders themselves are also skeptical of Boulder County’s process and plans. In emails obtained through a Colorado Open Records Act request, CSU’s Gene Kelly said the second RFP was “not well thought out” and, during the first RFP period, that the process was “really poorly organized by the BOS (Boulder County Open Space)folks.”

Kelly, deputy director of CSU’s Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station, did not respond to emailed requests for an interview.

Western Sugar Cooperative was more blunt. Its response to the RFP, a copy of which it provided to the Camera and Times-Call, criticized the timeline, budget and location of the research initiative and proposed alternatives to each.

Boulder County calls for a budget of $250,000 per year. The initial contract would be for five years, with an option to renew in additional five-year increments. Both bidders were asked to submit a 10-year operating budget.

Both CSU and Western Sugar met those fiscal restraints. But Western argued it would take an additional $1.2 million over five years to run, and offered to supplement the county’s money with in-kind contributions of its own, namely labor and equipment. The company also plans to solicit outside funds from “non-vested parties (no chemical companies, seed companies nor any organization within the organic industry.)”

Rebecca Larson, vice president and chief scientist for Western Sugar, acknowledged that this could spark criticisms of “big ag” funding the research, but denied any ulterior motive. SARII cannot be run on $250,000 per year, she insisted, adding that presenting such an unrealistic budget likely turned off potential bidders.

“You would lose money on an enterprise like that, so it’s going to drive away a lot of really sound science.”

Sound science is what farmers say they want from the research center. It was the talking point they clung to during the debate over whether GMOs should be phased out.

“I want what I wanted all along: a good scientific research program to find some new opportunities and good alternatives (to GMOs) from a financial and environmental standpoint,” said Miller. But he said he is hopeful that data from SARII could be used to roll back the GMO ban that could prove detrimental to the business of so many farmers.

Miller’s hope echoes fears of anti-GMO activists, who argued that farmers and Western Sugar are fighting not for science, but for the way things were.

Whatever happens, Ethic Watch’s Toro said its unusual for criticism of government contracts to start so early in the process.

“Often, disappointed bidders claim the process was flawed, and maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t,” he said. “The difference here is it’s blowing up before anyone was selected.”

Where things go from here is unclear. No timeline has been set for the commissioners to hear staff recommendations or issue a final decision.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Western Sugar proposed a $1.2 million annual budget to run SARII. That is the five-year proposed budget on in-kind contributions, in addition to the county’s five-year budget of $1.25 million.

Shay Castle: 303-473-1626, castles@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/shayshinecastle