A Tuesday town hall meeting for area residents to vent frustration over the state's new welfare-delivery system drew a crowd of about 500. What the crowd suggested about the new system's effectiveness became a subject of debate among those who support it and those who don't.
....... Indiana began privatizing welfare delivery last fall in a pilot program that involved a dozen central and eastern Indiana counties, including Delaware County.
...... Since the transition, however, social service agencies have reported an increase in complaints from people who have lost their food stamps and Medicaid health care coverage.
Senator Howard Stephenson says he'll continue his efforts to get government out of business. Stephenson, President of the Utah Taxpayers Association, says the "yellow pages test" is gaining support in the Legislature.
...... Utah is now recognized by the Reason Foundation as having the nation's most comprehensive state and local privatization laws. Three bills passed earlier this year require an inventory of state and local services that could be privatized. The new laws also require a process for private industry to take over some government services. Speaking on KCPW's Midday Metro Monday morning, Stephenson says this should also apply to the state-run liquor market.
Four City Department of Education employees were charged in a federal indictment (.pdf) on Tuesday with soliciting bribes in exchange for promising preferential treatment, including on safety inspections, to bus companies that serve thousands of special education students.
...... The indictment said the bus companies, which were not named, had paid bribes from the mid-1990s to 2007 for a variety of reasons, among them to get reduced fines for safety violations and advance notice of inspections that were supposed to be unannounced.
....... Parents of special education children have complained for years about unreliable bus service as well as abusive treatment of their children by bus drivers and matrons.
Governor Carcieri has proposed spending more than $200 million on contract employees for the coming year, according to a report presented last night before a packed meeting of the House Finance Committee.
...... Union officials said the public should know more about the use of contractors, especially given the massive state budget deficit for the coming year. "I know they can't eliminate all the contract employees," said James Cenerini, a lobbyist for the largest state employees union, Council 94 of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees. "But I think taxpayers should know how much money is being spent to pay contractors."
The food program provided to Detroit Public Schools students could soon be served, as well as managed, by school employees.
The Detroit Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday night to allow the contract with Philadelphia-based Aramark Educational Services, LLC to expire on June 30. Aramark has managed the $44-million food-services operation since 2001.
....... The vote came after at least a year of lobbying and protests staged by union employees who argued that DPS employees could do a better and cheaper job of running the food services.
..... Aramark President Dennis Maple wrote in a May 6 letter to Calloway that DPS should stick with his company. He also offered to work under contract to help transition to in-house management by employees.
State contracts with an information technology consultant and an initiative to equip classrooms with technology are about to go under the auditor general's microscope.
..... Some current and former state employees question how one company got so much of the state's technology business and whether it had anything to do with ties to Deloitte held by four high-level officials in Gov. Ed Rendell's administration.
In October 2004, the United States Army issued an urgent bulletin to commanders across Iraq, warning them of a deadly new threat to American soldiers. Because of flawed electrical work by contractors, the bulletin stated, soldiers at American bases in Iraq had received severe electrical shocks, and some had even been electrocuted.
...... American electricians who worked for KBR, the Houston-based defense contractor that is responsible for maintaining American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, said they repeatedly warned company managers and military officials about unsafe electrical work, which was often performed by poorly trained Iraqis and Afghans paid just a few dollars a day.
]]>Deputies from Mexico's revolutionary Democratic Party (PrD) were protesting an initiative to privatize the state-run oil company Petroleos mexicanos (Pemex) on April 14.
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Halliburton is licking its chops at the prospect of Mexico's state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos going private.
Petróleos Mexicanos, or PEMEX, withstood a tsunami of privatizations of formerly state-owned companies in the late 1980s and '90s. But now, with pro-business President Felipe Calderón in office, the effort is being revisited -- and the Mexican left is coming out en masse to defend the 70-year-old company, a long-time source of national pride and a symbol of Mexican sovereignty.
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Corporations are running many Americans prisons, but will they put profits before prisoners?
A grim new statistic: One in every hundred Americans is now locked behind bars. As the prison population grows faster than the government can build prisons, private companies see an opportunity for profit.
This week, NOW on PBS investigates the government's trend to outsource prisons and prisoners to the private sector. Critics accuse private prisons of standing in the way of sentencing reform and sacrificing public safety to maximize profits.
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An audit claims Wackenhut Corp. billed Miami-Dade Transit about $6.02 million over three years for work its security officers did not do.
Wackenhut said it disagreed with the methodology used by the auditor.
...... Wackenhut is currently responsible for three contracts with the county -- the care and custody of juvenile detainees at the Juvenile Assessment Center, security services for Miami-Dade Transit and security services for a Public Works Special Taxing District.
Miami Dade Audit & Management Services
A union representing state employees said New York is wasting taxpayer dollars. The Public Employees Federation said the state is hiring private consultants when it should be using state workers.
Using data from the state Comptroller's Office, PEF did a study which said New York State could save $700 million if it stopped hiring consultants and used state workers to do the same jobs.
The Research Bureau has again urged the city to unload some of its properties, including the airport, the DCU Center, Union Station and the Senior Center, and recommended other cost-saving measures such as outsourcing custodial services, ending paid police details at construction sites, further reducing employee health insurance costs, and limiting police and fire injured-on-duty compensation.
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With the cost to put people in county jails on the increase each year, Peoria is taking a look at the private sector to do the job. Maricopa County is predicting an 8 percent increase in the jail incarceration fee in fiscal year 2009 for Peoria, a $108,000 jump to $383,000. Also, new DUI laws have increased the number of booking days for first- and second-offenders.
Mayor Bill Finch, excoriated in recent days over his proposed budget that would deeply cut the school health clinics, said Tuesday the clinics could remain open if they were privatized. Finch, at a news conference in City Hall Annex, announced the formation of a seven-member committee that will make recommendations for turning over operation of the 10 school clinics to private health care providers.
....... Finch was referring to the reimbursement the city gets from Medicaid for services provided at the clinics. Other health care providers can bill Medicaid at a higher rate than the city if they're federally qualified, officials say.
Contracting professionals must ensure that the federal government receives the best value for the taxpayer dollar while following acquisition regulations during procurement and contract management. Without a large influx of new workers, federal government contract processes could be severely impaired as the number and complexity of procurements increase. From 1991 to 2005, the number of contracting officers declined from thirty-seven thousand to twenty-eight thousand while procurement spending increased from $150 billion to $350 billion.
The large number soon eligible to retire and the marked increase in those less experienced give the field a lopsided demographic. Those in the middle of their career are woefully few. Young professionals, therefore, have an opportunity to replace those who are retiring and become leaders in the contracting field. To do so, they must quickly garner an institutional education, learning from others in the field to avoid the gaps in knowledge that will cost the taxpayer.
To inform young contracting professionals, this article reflects on the legal regimen of the procurement of food and beverages, with emphasis on conferences. It also discusses the state of the meeting industry and how this can influence rates, as well as negotiation techniques to ensure fair and reasonable pricing.