The Cook County contracting process has long been criticized as a Byzantine system of rules, regulations and ordinances that make it impossible for vendors to know what they need to do to obtain lucrative government business.

But a recent contract shows that, when it comes to county ordinances, the county isn't consistent in how it applies those rules and isn't necessarily using the most current law on the books.

In at least one area of contracting, security services, the county has bounced back and forth between conflicting ordinances to determine what companies should be paying their workers.

Critics, including Republican Commissioner Liz Gorman, who represents parts of Arlington Heights and Des Plaines, say the misdirection is intentional, an underhanded way to direct county business to favored friends of the Cook County Board President Todd Stroger's administration.

Administrators say it's nothing more than a past mix-up, and that Gorman is making it an issue because she really wants to cut minorities out of the loop of county business - a charge she denies.

In one of the most recent applications of the conflicting ordinances, county administrators used a 15-year-old ordinance instead of one approved two years ago in order to disqualify a black, female entrepreneur with 15 years experience and a master's degree, in favor of a higher bid by a male owner apparently running his business out of an apartment. The switch cost taxpayers at least an additional $46,295.

Moore Security Services was the low bidder on two large contracts awarded recently. The first was for security guards for the clerk of the circuit court. Moore bid $258,566 while Witfield Security Service bid $272,387. In the second contract for security at county health clinics, Moore bid $833,942 while Whitfield came in at $866,413.

County contract compliance administrator Betty Hancock-Perry at first disqualified Moore, stating in a memo that the company did not meet goals for participation by minority and women-owned businesses - even though Moore's owner, Debra Moore-German, is both black and female.

Hancock-Perry later retracted the memo, saying she had inadvertently listed the wrong reason for disqualification. In reality, Moore was disqualified because her proposal wouldn't have paid her employees the prevailing wage required by county ordinance, Hancock-Perry said.

That's true only if you use a 1994 ordinance, which has different rules than several passed since, most recently in 2007. Moore's wages are in line with the 2007 law, which specifically says it applies to security guard contracts.

That law requires any company hired to do security work to pay their employees $22,050 a year plus benefits. Moore's guards make $23,400, at $11.25 an hour, plus benefits.

The 15-year-old law used to justify rejecting Moore's bid requires that employees be paid $11.25 an hour and $395.19 in benefits, said the county's human resources director, Joseph Sova. Moore planned to pay guards $11.25 an hour plus $340.95 a month in benefits, Sova said.

County purchasing agent Carmen Triche Colvin and county attorney Laura Lechowicz Felicione defended the practice, saying the 1994 ordinance, while old, is still good because it wasn't explicitly repealed by the subsequent ordinances passed.

Then why did the county use a 1998 wage ordinance for the same security contract when it was issued in 2006?

"Unfortunately, I can't speak to that because I wasn't in this position at that point in time (2006)," said Triche Colvin.

Mark Rosen, a municipal law expert at Chicago-Kent College of Law, said it is not unheard of for legislatures to issue ordinances or laws that conflict with earlier ones without explicitly revoking them. The conflicts can results in lawsuits, leaving a judge to sort out which law, or even which parts of a law, are still valid.

Commissioner Roberto Maldonado, a Chicago Democrat who sponsored the 2007 law, said he had no problem with administrators going back to the 1994 law, as long as it resulted in the county paying contract workers more, not less, than the standard he set in the 2007 law.

"My intention was to guarantee a minimum," he said.

While that's the result in the most recent case, it was not the case when the contract was issued in 2006. By using the 1998 law in that case, it set the guards' minimum wage at $7.60 an hour, with or without benefits. Had the county used the most current wage law at that time, a 2005 amendment that specifically referenced security guards, it would have set the wage at $9.43 an hour plus benefits, or $11.78 without benefits.

Commissioner Gorman said the shell game of imposing one ordinance for one contract and another ordinance for another contract leaves vendors always wondering which way is up. And she believes that's how county administrators want it.

"They use the one that's most beneficial to the (vendor to whom) they want to give the contract," she said.

Whitfield Security Service, owned by Oscar Whitfield, did not return phone calls or e-mails. The business is not registered with the Illinois Secretary of State, but Triche Colvin said, as a business owned solely by one person, it is not required to. It is, however, licensed by Illinois to act as a security company. Its business address, at 1030 E. 47th St., appears to be an apartment building. No one answered Friday at the address.

According to a commercially available database, Oscar Whitfield at one point had some association with an address at 2630 S. Wabash Ave. in Chicago, the address of Digby's Security. A Digby's representative said Friday Whitfield used to work there, but does not now.

Triche Colvin said running a business out of an apartment is permitted under county rules unless having a commercial place of business is an integral part of the business. Since security guards turn in timesheets at the job site, a commercial location is not required, she said.