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BOOK AJ PAGE a1 7 of the concern, that he, as a consultant, received commissions on other cases. He was not present to contest their decision, but was concerned about his reputation. In the insurance industry a good reputation for ethics is all you have which is why he wanted to come today. The package the County has received contains a lot of information on the work already done. They were able to reduce the administrative fee by about $35,000; the stop -loss fees have also come down; and they ave made various other recommendations. The biggest recommendation, he felt, was that the County could reduce their fixed cost increase of 43% down to 17% with these recommendations. One recommendation was that the County not pay over $100,000 in insurance commissions plus the money to his firm for consulting fees. This results in a duplication of effort. He posed the question whether the $100,000 to insurance agents is warranted from the value they are bringing to the table. He recommended the commissions for agents servicing the County's account be negotiated down or excluded. Obviously if they are excluded, the local agent community will be upset. Rather than exclude them, he recommended they open the consulting RFP to agents to resubmit. The negotiating has already been done for October ? and he wanted to give them this recommendation as difficult as it would be for future decision-making. Administrator Chandler stated there was no question as to the fine reputation of The Gehring Group and that was part of the consideration when they were retained. Nothing they have done has diminished that. The County has determined in the past, with good reason, that there should be a clear delineation and separation between the firm doing the evaluation and the firm submitting an RFP. In this case, there has been a disagreement or misunderstanding. Administrator Chandler reiterated that with the report from The Gehring Group staff will be able to move forward and come in with a recommendation to the Board by the end of August. Vice Chairman Adams thought the conflict was unintentional and that the work product is very good and useful to the County. She supported the separation of services so there is no appearance of conflict of interest and appreciated staff being alert to it. ON MOTION by Commissioner Adams, SECONDED BY Commissioner Stanbridge, the Board unanimously approved staff's recommendation to . terminate the contract with The - Gehring Group. July 13, 1999 70