[ScottWhigham]

This is potentially very dangerous advice and I would not be so quick to accept it were I the OP. The question is, "Since the original programmer is almost finished with the entire thing, if you fire him before the contract is finished and start over, what will he do with the code?"

Depending on the contract structure, he might be free to sell it on his own, give/sell it to a competitor, or release it on the web for free. Meanwhile, poor OP is now six months behind schedule and has to start over.

Sorry but I don't know how you can be so black and white about the issue without us knowing more information. If OP followed this advice without thinking through the problem, he could be much, much worse off. It could be that you are right but, without more info about the contract, we don't know.