Judge OKs Salt Lake contract

Southwest Ambulance can continue its plans to take over emergency responses for Salt Lake City in April.

Third District Court Judge Glenn Iwasaki ruled Friday that the city followed the right process when it gave its ambulance contract to the Arizona-based Southwest over Gold Cross, which for years had been the city's ambulance provider. Southwest is scheduled to take over from Gold Cross just after midnight the morning of April 3.

"It does feel good to have a judge say that the way in which you chose this provider is correct," said Scott Freitag, a spokesman for the fire department. "Not only does the city feel the city did the right thing, but the Utah Department of Health said the city did the right thing, and now the courts have said the city has done the right thing."

Southwest got the Salt Lake City contract after a months-long vetting process during which a committee of nine men — mostly firefighters and paramedics — evaluated the two companies on criteria including their training, on-time records and cost to patients.

Salt Lake City pays the same for its ambulance contract regardless of the provider because state law sets those fees. The cost to patients, however, varies among companies. The state health department last week gave Southwest an ambulance license. That, along with the Salt Lake City contract, allows the company to take over service from Gold Cross.

Salt Lake City awarded the contract to Southwest on Dec. 15, and Gold Cross registered its first complaint about the process seven days later. In his ruling Friday, Iwasaki said that Gold Cross should have complained about the formal request for proposals to provide ambulance service long before Southwest got the contract.

"Gold Cross could have known and, indeed, actually did know, all the facts necessary to file a protest by the closing date for proposals," or before Salt Lake City awarded the contract, Iwasaki wrote.

Gold Cross lawyer Alan Sullivan said the company may appeal. "That's just one of the options we're looking at," he said.

In its lawsuit against Southwest and the city, Gold Cross said that the City Council had to approve requests for proposals. City attorneys argued that the city needed only the approval of Mayor Rocky Anderson, whose office oversees the city's procurement and purchasing divisions.

Iwasaki did not rule specifically on whether the city needed the council's approval, but he wrote that issuing requests for proposals "is a classic executive function or, in this case, one falling within the purview of the mayor."

Southwest, meanwhile, has continued hiring and training its approximately 60 new employees, including many it recruited from Gold Cross, said Josh Weiss, a Southwest spokesman. Sullivan said that puts Gold Cross in a tough situation because it still responds to 911 calls elsewhere in Salt Lake County. The company has to recruit and train employees who will replace those recruited by Southwest, Sullivan said.

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E-mail: kswinyard@desnews.com