Source: Capital 9 News (NY), 05/09/2008 06:22 AM
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.
Source: Associated Press, March 26, 2008
Big worries for the nation's first high-tech census should have been obvious when the door-to-door headcounters couldn't figure out their fancy new handheld computers. Now, officials say, technology problems could add as much as $2 billion to the cost of the 2010 census and jeopardize the accuracy of the nation's most important survey.
A congressional agency says the census is at "high risk" of producing an expensive yet unreliable count, and lawmakers are planning hearings. ...... Census officials are being blamed for a poor job spelling out technical requirements to the contractor, Florida-based Harris Corp. The computers proved too complex for some temporary workers who tried to use them in a test last year in North Carolina. Also, the computers were not initially programmed to transmit the large amounts of data necessary.
...... Harris Corp. was awarded a $596 million contract in March 2006 to supply the handheld computers and the operating system that supports them. The contract has since grown to $647 million, and could balloon by as much as $2 billion, according to a report this month by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
Source: Pat Shellenbarger, The Grand Rapids Press (MI), March 25, 2008 17:12PM
....... The average annual cost of medical care for each inmate increased by nearly 65 percent over the decade ending in 2006, according to a report by Michigan's auditor general. (.pdf) During that same period, the cost of medical care for the general public grew by a little more than 40 percent.
......... The Corrections Department could control costs by following its own policies and doing a better job of monitoring its contracts with the private companies that provide medical and pharmaceutical services in the prisons, the report suggested.
.......... The audit released Tuesday, however, said medical services in the state's prisons are as good as or better than those covered by Medicare, Medicaid and some privates HMOs, a finding that advocates for inmates dispute.
Just because a medical procedure is listed as covered doesn't mean the Corrections Department or its private contractor, Correctional Medical Services, will pay for it, said Penny Ryder, head of the American Friends Service Committee's criminal justice program.
Source: By CHRIS GREEN, Harris News Service (KS), March 4, 2008
Some Kansans already are taking advantage of a new Web site allowing them to research how state government spends their tax dollars. However, the information they'll be able to access has limits and some details, such as the individual salaries of state employees, won't be available just yet through the database.
Source: Deloitte Services LP, Published: 2/14/08, Contact: John La Place
NEW YORK, February 14, 2008 - A new study from Deloitte reports that enterprises entering into outsourcing arrangements are focusing too heavily on reducing costs through labor arbitrage alone, resulting in high levels of disappointment and conflict even though most companies are realizing the cost savings that they had hoped for.
The Deloitte study, "Why Settle for Less: 2008 Outsourcing Report" reported that 83 percent of companies surveyed had achieved an ROI of over 25 percent on their outsourcing projects. However, 49 percent of the executives surveyed indicated they would have defined service levels that aligned better with their companies' business goals if they could start their outsourcing projects over and only 34 percent of respondents reported that they had gained important benefits from their service providers' innovative ideas or transformation of their operations.
In addition, by a 3-to-1 margin, the outsourcing service providers polled reported that their client companies did not have a solid outsourcing plan, lacked the operational data needed to make sound decisions and did not understand how the to-be organization would really work. Such contradictory findings could be the result of a failure to properly define the goals of the outsourcing projects as being more than saving money.
Source: NPR Morning Edition, February 7, 2008
The government in Alaska launched a Web site this week listing every state expense of more than $1,000. It's the latest state to set up a Web site to let taxpayers see where their money is going. Ten other states have such sites.
Source: By KEN DIXON, Connecticut Post, 01/31/2008
A multi-year investigation (.pdf) into a Rowland-era sweetheart contract to privatize Connecticut's worker's compensation claims, indicates the state may have overpaid tens of millions of dollars. The no-bid contract, awarded through the state Department of Administrative Services, used $80 million in state bonding funds, usually used for long-term capital construction projects.
....... Blumenthal, in a morning news conference in his office, said that while there was no apparent criminal activity - and no written order from Rowland to hire the consultants - the state clearly overpaid a consulting company to settle hundreds of worker's compensation claims, using college interns who were paid $105 per hour. He said that state employees were clearly capable of settling the claims, but in the move to privatize the work, taxpayer funds were misspent.
..... He said MRM Consulting, Inc. made a "deeply flawed" consultant's report advising an outside contractor be hired.
...... A firm called ACE Financial Solutions, LLC, was paid $80 million. About $60 million was spent to settle about 545 of the 600 worker's compensation claims and ACE has been collecting interest on the remaining $20 million.
Source: By PATRICK MARLEY, Journal Sentinel (WI), Nov. 22, 2007
Madison - The state outsourced work at least 74 times in the most recent fiscal year even after determining it would cost less to use state employees.
Despite those decisions, contracting costs dropped 14% for the fiscal year that ended June 30, continuing a downward trend since Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle took office, a new report shows. (.pdf)
The report suggests that the state could have saved more. Precise figures were not available, but a Journal Sentinel analysis of state records shows that as much as $12.5 million went to contractors that would have been saved if state workers had been used instead.
....... Early last year, Doyle signed the law requiring cost-benefit analyses for any service that would cost more than $25,000. Tuesday's report was the first look at how the law has been working.
Source: Nebraska.tv, Dec 19, 2007 10:37 AM
State Auditor Mike Foley has released a list (.pdf) of over 800 vendors paid $500,000 and above by the State of Nebraska during Fiscal Year 07. In addition, the Auditor has released a list of University and State personnel with a gross income of over $100,000 during Fiscal Year 07, beginning July 1, 2006 and ending June 30, 2007.
Source: By Deborah Yetter, The Courier-Journal (KY), Tuesday, December 18, 2007
A state audit found no evidence of savings in the state Medicaid program promised by the administration of former Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who claimed Medicaid reform as one of his top accomplishments in his failed re-election bid.
...... Luallen, a Democrat, said her office waited until after the Nov. 6 election to release the audit so it would not become an issue in the governor's race.
....... Medicaid spends about $300 million a year on three private contractors to process claims, manage information, operate a call system for members and operate its prescription drug program. But until recently they operated with little oversight or accountability.
In July, Medicaid hired an outside company, Accenture, to monitor the three other outside contractors -- even though Texas fired that company last year for poor performance on a contract.
........ State Sen. Ernesto Scorsone, a Lexington Democrat on the Health and Welfare Committee, said he's concerned about the growth in outside contractors for the Medicaid program listed in the audit report.
"I think the only winners are the outside vendors who have made money off the state," he said.
Source: Michael McNutt, NewsOK.com, December 17, 2007
Looking up state expenses soon will be as simple as clicking onto the Internet.
The Office of State Finance is in the final stages of developing a Web site that will allow people to view how state money is spent.
...... Vendors paid more than $25,000 and travel expenses by agencies also will be listed; it also will list expenditures by agencies. Eventually, every vendor will be listed on the site.
Source: USASpending.org
Have you ever wanted to find more information on government spending? Have you ever wondered where federal contracting dollars and grant awards go? Or perhaps you would just like to know, as a citizen, what the government is really doing with your money. The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (Transparency Act) requires a single searchable website, accessible by the public for free that includes for each Federal award:
1. The name of the entity receiving the award;
2. The amount of the award;
3. Information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc;
4. The location of the entity receiving the award;
5. A unique identifier of the entity receiving the award.
Welcome to www.USAspending.gov, a relaunch of www.FederalSpending.gov, that provides citizens with easy access to government contract, grant and other award data.
Source: By Geoffrey Fattah, Deseret Morning News (UT), Sept. 20, 2007
Privatizing Utah's prison system would have no clear cost advantages, according to an independent study that was presented to lawmakers on Wednesday.
The study by the University of Utah's School of Social Work and Criminal Justice Center compared existing studies conducted in other states that have both private and public prisons and found "no clear empirical advantage or disadvantage to privatize."
Study co-author Brad Lundahl told members of the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee that the majority of private prison facilities are medium- to minimum-security facilities.
Source: By ED SEALOVER, THE GAZETTE (CO), August 22, 2007 - 12:02AM
The state auditor’s office blasted the Department of Labor and Employment for failing to oversee the development of a new computer system earlier this decade, saying problems that cost Colorado $24 million could have been found and addressed sooner.
The Labor Department contracted with a private firm in 2001 to create a computer system, known as Genesis, which would process unemployment benefits and taxes. After a series of missed deadlines and failed tests, the department canceled the project in December 2005 and received back just $8 million of the $32 million it had paid to Accenture.
....... An audit released Tuesday (.pdf) found that the department did not establish a project-management structure that involved three levels of oversight on the contractor, relying instead on Accenture to oversee and manage its project.
Source: Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
...... Rare is the reporter who has not dealt with some privatization, whether that is with a contractor paid for some traditionally governmental service — such as running prisons in Texas or performing military duties in Iraq — or with an entity that has some public and private characteristics, such as an economic development corporation.
But the public records and open meetings laws that the press relies on provide much less access to the private contractors than if those responsibilities are still in government hands. That can make it nearly impossible for the media to provide oversight of important public services and report on how taxpayer money is being spent.
See the full Special Report on Privatization v. The Public’s Right to Know with links to additional articles.
Source: New York City Mayor’s Office of Contract Services
The NYC Vendor Search provides detailed information about vendors that do business with the City of New York and their principals. Vendor and principal information available in this application is obtained through VENDEX questionnaires. For more information on VENDEX, please visit www.nyc.gov/vendex.
Note: New York City Vendor Search, “is a subset of data from the City’s Vendor Information Exchange System (VENDEX) system which is maintained by the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services (MOCS).”
Source: By AMY DOOLITTLE, Federal Times, July 23, 2007
House Democrats intend to make it harder for unethical and poor-performing contractors to win federal business.
“Right now, there is nothing stopping a fraudulent contractor from bouncing from federal agency to federal agency, fleecing U.S. taxpayers the whole way,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said July 18 at a House hearing to review the matter.
She and Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., introduced this month a bill that would create a new extensive database on every federal contractor that has done work for the government in the last five years.
Source: Associated Press (MO), 6:30 am CDT July 12, 2007
From utility to hotel bills, the curious now have an easier way to see how Missouri is spending its tax dollars. Missouri launched an Internet site Wednesday that allows people to search a database of expenditures both by broad categories and by specific businesses and individuals. It's updated after the close of business each day -- a feature that Gov. Matt Blunt's office claims makes it one of the first of its kind nationally.
....... Five states -- Kansas, Hawaii, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Texas -- enacted laws this year requiring state Internet sites that can search government contracts, grants and, in some cases, other kinds of expenses, according to Americans for Tax Reform, a low-tax advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
....... The site is dubbed the Missouri Accountability Portal, or MAP. The acronym is intended to suggest it provides a map to how tax dollars are spent.
Source: By CHARLES WILSON, The Associated Press (IN), May 25, 2007
Inexperienced guards and too much idle time for prisoners who were transferred from Arizona too quickly contributed to a disturbance last month at a privately run state prison, according to a state report released Thursday (.pdf).
...... The medium-security New Castle prison is run by Boca Raton, Fla.-based GEO Group Inc., but the report does not find any faults by the company. The report said the New Castle prison needed a "longer, more staged transfer of inmates" to allow time to hire and train guards and other staffers.
Source: By Steve Terrell, The New Mexican, May 24, 2007
New Mexico pays significantly more than nearby states to house inmates in private prisons, according to a report presented Wednesday to state lawmakers. The 100-page audit (.pdf) by a Legislative Finance Committee review team says New Mexico's private-prison spending rose 57 percent in the past six years, while the inmate population increased only 21 percent.
….. The major private prison operator in the state is The GEO Group, which operates facilities in Hobbs and Santa Rosa and will operate a prison being built in Clayton.
Source: National Association of State Highway and Transportation Unions
NASHTU has provided links to reports on transportation privatization from a variety of sources.
Source: WRAL.com (NC), May. 10, 2007
Raleigh — The state auditor said Thursday that the Division of Waste Management got ripped off on a six-figure contract because it did not verify a contractor's paperwork.
The division paid TIRES, Inc. of Winston-Salem $320,000 to produce 20,000 rubber playground mats from old automobile tires, Auditor Les Merritt's office said in a report. The company actually made 5,700 mats, Merritt found.
Merritt said the division, part of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, should sue to get its money back and should be more careful about verifying what its contractor tell it they did.
Source: By Christine Stapleton and Deana Poole, Palm Beach Post (FL), Wednesday, February 21, 2007
The Convention and Visitors Bureau doesn't provide adequate management and operational oversight of the convention center and shouldn't oversee the $84 million county-owned facility, an audit released today concluded.
....... The audit report stopped short of calling for the county to take over management at the center. But the audit's release comes just days before county commissioners are scheduled to debate the matter.
Source: By Bill Cotterell, Tallahassee Democrat, Feb 22, 2007
Gov. Charlie Crist ordered a top-to-bottom review of privatization in state government Wednesday - starting with the troubled ''People First'' contract with Convergys for online personnel services.
''The review will serve as a starting point for evaluating how to reap the most value from the system, whether privatization has merit - if it does, we should use it, if it doesn't, we should not,'' Crist said at a news conference with Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink.
Source: Associated Press (WI), Fri, Feb. 02, 2007
MADISON, Wis. - A state Department of Transportation attorney says two appointees of Gov. Jim Doyle told him to delay the release of a politically damaging 2004 report. Jim Thiel testified Thursday he had been told to not release the report until after he got a copy of a Department of Administration rebuttal that questioned the DOT's finding that state engineers cost 18 percent less than consultants. Doyle pledged during the 2002 governor's race to trim 10,000 employees from state payrolls and has argued that contractors could do some work more cheaply than state employees.
Source: Associated Press (WI), Thursday, January 25, 2007
The state Department of Transportation has agreed to pay a $500 forfeiture as part of a settlement for not complying with an open records request for a report comparing the cost of using state workers and contractors. The department agreed to plead guilty to allegations it “arbitrarily and capriciously” denied or delayed its response to a request for the report under the deal with the state Justice Department filed Wednesday. …… Former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, a Democrat, sued the department and its secretary, Frank Busalacchi, in June of last year. She alleged agency employees had completed the report (.pdf) in April 2004 and that Tim Hanley, then the president of the State Engineering Association, filed a request for the report in August 2004. But the agency refused to turn it over to the association, a union representing state engineers, until November 2004.
Source: By Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow Jr., Washington Post, Saturday, December 2, 2006
The new chief of the U.S. General Services Administration is trying to limit the ability of the agency's inspector general to audit contracts for fraud or waste and has said oversight efforts are intimidating the workforce, according to government documents and interviews. GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan, a Bush political appointee and former government contractor, has proposed cutting $5 million in spending on audits and shifting some responsibility for contract reviews to small, private audit contractors.
Source: New York Daily News, Nov 3, 2006
The city is leaning on the private sector, spending more than $11 billion on outside groups to provide services ranging from foster care to garbage hauling, according to a new report.
In the last fiscal year, city officials sealed more than 46,000 deals with private contractors, according to the study from New York Law School's Center for New York City Law.
This website, created by OMB Watch, is a free, searchable database of federal government spending. To begin searching, select either the Grants or Contracts tab at the top left side of this page. You can easily switch back and forth as you search.
Source: PETER WONG, Statesman Journal (OR), September 7, 2006
A state audit (.pdf) has criticized how the 12 largest data-processing centers of state agencies were merged into a single State Data Center in Salem last year.
The audit faulted the Department of Administrative Services for having to hire almost as many people for the consolidated center as were working in the 12 agencies, even though the total was supposed to shrink from 155 to 93 by mid-2007. The revised level is 149, "postponing or negating much of the promised project savings," said the audit released by the secretary of state.
The audit also questioned spending of $3.4 million of the $7.7 million that the state paid between January 2005 and February of this year to Accenture, a management consulting and technology services firm that helped the state plan and implement the single data center.
Source: Howard Fischer, Arizona Business Gazette, Aug. 3, 2006 12:00 AM
Arizona taxpayers may be picking up more of the tab for highway construction than they bargained for, thanks to the heavy use of outside consultants who earn more than engineers employed by the state. A report by the state Auditor General's Office found that as of January, the Arizona Department of Transportation had 430 contracts with 121 private consultants worth $559 million. Consultants are involved in chores ranging from obtaining rights of way for highways and preparing projects for bidding to designing new roads. The agency's use of outside consultants has increased 424 percent over the past decade, even after adjusting for inflation.
Source: By ADAM WILSON, THE OLYMPIAN (WA), August 3, 2006
The Legislature has launched an audit of the state's use of a law allowing contracts with private companies. …… The ability to hire private firms to provide services to the public - called competitive contracting or contracting out - was part of the Personnel Reform Act of 2002. …. State workers unions have fought against contracting out by filing grievances with the Public Employment Relations Commission and challenging the proposed rules for the process. The largest state workers union, the Washington Federation of State Employees, has argued that any contracting out must be negotiated with the union.
Source: By Bill Cotterell, Tallahassee Democrat (FL), August 2, 2006
The head of Florida's prison system, who has been cleaning up contracting scandals for six months in the Department of Corrections, voiced skepticism about prison privatization Tuesday. Secretary Jim McDonough said private companies are good at financing and building prisons but that his department is better at running them. The state has five privately operated prisons, and a sixth under construction, but McDonough said he doesn't see it as a growth industry.
...... McDonough took over the prison system last February after former Secretary Jim Crosby was fired by Gov. Jeb Bush. Crosby and a top aide, former Panhandle regional chief Allen Clark, last month pleaded guilty in Jacksonville federal court to taking kickbacks from a company that sold snacks and other items to visitors at a prison canteen.
The state separately charged eight other prison employees with theft of prison property and misuse of inmate labor. The two companies that run privatized prisons, Corrections Corp. of America and GEO Group, were not involved in the scandals - but an internal audit by the Department of Management Services last year said the state had made nearly $13 million in overpayments for operation of the private prisons.
Source: By The Associated Press (IN), Monday July 17, 2006
More than 80 percent of the money spent on state purchases went to in-state vendors, according to a state database — but a newspaper analysis found that not all of those companies were based in Indiana.
A recent “Buy Indiana” report tracking state expenditures on goods and services from July 1, 2005, to June 19, 2006, classified the University of Cincinnati and the University of Utah as in-state vendors, The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette found.
...... Gov. Mitch Daniels made increasing state procurement from Indiana companies a plank of his 2004 campaign. Published reports at the time said at least 15 percent of the professional services and 40 percent of the goods bought by the state were from out-of-state companies. ...... But the state has changed the definition of what constitutes an Indiana business. ...... last year, Daniels and the General Assembly expanded the definition to include any business that makes significant capital investments in Indiana or has a substantial positive economic effect in the state.
Source: Associated Press (CO), Jun 28, 2006 9:59 pm US/Mountain
An audit sparked by a riot at a Corrections Corp. of America prison in Crowley County uncovered staffing shortages at two prisons run by that company that resulted in fines of $126,000, a first in Colorado. ..... The company's Kit Carson County prison in Burlington, near the Colorado-Kansas state line, was fined $103,743 for leaving 701 required shifts empty in a 10-week period from Nov. 1 to Jan. 10, according to state records.
CCA's Crowley County prison in Olney Springs was fined nearly $23,000 for leaving 157 shifts open in the same period. An inquiry into a riot at the Crowley County prison in 2004 found the company's staff-to-inmate ration was one-seventh of the state's prison's at the time. Thirty-three officers were guarding 1,122 inmates.
Source: By Josh Hafenbrack, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, June 25, 2006
Florida's switch to a privatized child-welfare system has been followed by increased instances of abuse and more children shuffled among foster homes, a state audit has found.
The number of Florida children who are abused multiple times has steadily increased since the state started shifting its child-welfare system to private hands in 1999, according to a report released this month by the Legislature's investigative arm, the Office of Program and Policy Analysis & Government Accountability.
Source: By STEVE SCHULTZE, Journal Sentinel (WI), April 26, 2006
Milwaukee County provided lax oversight and entered poorly written lease deals with private food vendors at Lake, O'Donnell and Red Arrow parks, said an audit released Tuesday. But County Executive Scott Walker said the shortcomings shouldn't hamper his efforts to expand privatization at county parks and other facilities. Walker has suggested placing additional coffee shops in parks and scrutiny of other commercial deals to help plug a growing county budget gap.
Source: BY MARC CAPUTO, Miami Herald (FL), Tue, Apr. 25, 2006
Payroll problems. Paperwork and computer foul-ups. Questionable promises of saving taxpayers money. According to a new legislative audit, the controversial $350 million contract farming out the state's massive human-resources responsibilities to the Convergys company is still rife with troubles. In some cases, the audit says, state agencies have had to spend more staff time and tax money to make the system work, even though the so-called ''People First'' contract was supposed to streamline, centralize and computerize the state's personnel system. …… None of it comes as a surprise to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union long predicted that taxpayers would see little savings and that state workers would get more headaches from the contract.
Source: By Jerd Smith, Rocky Mountain News (CO), April 19, 2006
A new state computer system that processes food stamps and other welfare benefits has had "unacceptable" error rates that could cost Colorado $10 million, according to a state audit released Tuesday morning. Officials from the Department of Human Services and the Department of Health Care Policy and Finance said the majority of the problems have been corrected and that recurring ones are the result of ongoing computer glitches and errors by county workers who operate what's known as the Colorado Benefits Management System. …… Roxane White, director of Denver's social services department, said the audit lays too much of the fault for CBMS glitches at the feet of county workers and failed to consider the herculean efforts they were making to ensure that people going without benefits received them, even if it meant creating an error report.
[Contractor: EDS]
Source: By Griff Witte, Washington Post, Wednesday, April 12, 2006; D03
Alaska Native Corporations have quadrupled their share of federal small-business contracts in just the past few years, but the government has provided lax oversight that opens the door to potential abuses, according to a new audit by the Government Accountability Office.
The companies, known as ANCs, receive preferences that make it easier for the government to give them no-bid contracts under a program for small and disadvantaged businesses. With federal procurement offices increasingly spread thin with smaller staffs and fewer resources, the firms' business has surged as the government turns to them for help without having to conduct competitions. From 2000 to 2004, the value of contracts received by ANCs under the small- and disadvantaged-business program jumped to $1.1 billion from $265 million, according to a draft copy of a GAO report obtained by The Washington Post.
By April M. Washington, Rocky Mountain News, March 30, 2006
Audits performed over the past two years have found a consistent lack of state oversight of multimillion-dollar contracts awarded to private vendors, state officials said Wednesday. Deputy State Auditor Cindi Stetson said performance audits found that nearly half of 44 contracts awarded by various state agencies were haphazardly managed. As a result, the state has potentially spent millions of dollars on contractors who have failed to fully deliver. ..... A series of audits in 2004 and 2005 found that agencies failed to comply with state purchasing guidelines and rules; found a number of contracts that were unsigned; found contracts that failed to include a maximum payout; and found contracts that failed to include monetary penalties if a contractor failed to perform or deliver goods or service as promised.
Source: Associated Press, Thursday, March 16, 2006
WASHINGTON — The government wasted millions of dollars in its award of post-Katrina hurricane contracts for disaster relief, including at least $3 million for 4,000 beds that were never used, congressional auditors said Thursday. The Government Accountability Office's review of 13 major contracts -- many of them awarded with limited or no competition after the Aug. 29 hurricane -- offers the first preliminary overview of their soundness. Waste and mismanagement were widespread due to poor planning and miscommunication, according to the five-page briefing paper released Thursday. That led to money being paid for services, such as housing or ice, that were never used.
Source: By STEVE BOUSQUET, St. Petersburg Times (FL), March 14, 2006
After a scathing audit of two no-bid contracts for prescription drugs for prison inmates, interim prison boss James McDonough is considering scrapping the deals and having the state do the work itself. "It was a poorly managed contract," McDonough said after testifying Monday before a legislative committee. "I think this is a classic case of mismanagement." At issue are two contracts worth $84-million between the prisons and TYA Pharmaceuticals of Tallahassee: one to repackage medications for prisoner use, the other to split tablets. The larger deal, worth $72-million, began in 1998 under a Democratic administration. The second, worth $12-million, was inked last year. ..... Among the problems cited: The Corrections Department did not seek bids, did not have adequate records of a former prison official who later went to work for TYA, did not run background checks on TYA employees and did not keep adequate paperwork.
Source: By LEE WILLIAMS and ESTEBAN PARRA, The News Journal (DE), 03/08/2006
Federal civil rights regulators will enter Delaware prisons within days with the authority to assume control of operations and health care if the state refuses to allow a U.S. Justice Department examination of inmate medical care and prison management, which could take years to complete. The announcement came today, on the heels of a five-month preliminary inquiry by the Justice Department during which federal regulators interviewed the same medical experts, inmates and families of dead inmates who spoke to The News Journal late last year during the newspaper’s six-month investigation of prison health care. ...... During the course of the newspaper’s investigation, reporters discovered that Gov. Ruth Ann Minner and Correction Commissioner Stan Taylor awarded a $25.9 million, no-bid contract for inmate health care to Correctional Medical Services -- a private medical contractor with a history of litigation over how the company provides medical care. Minner and Taylor also refused to release -- publicly or to lawmakers -- an audit of prison health care they say prompted the emergency hiring of Correctional Medical Services.
Source: DON WALKER, Journal Sentinel (WI), Feb. 7, 2006
Mindful of the fallout from the Adelman Travel contract, state Administration Secretary Stephen Bablitch has brought in former state auditor Dale Cattanach to oversee the selection process for a massive new information system the state wants to install. Bablitch brought Cattanach in as part of Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle's directive to provide greater public assurance about the bid process, said Tom Solberg, a spokesman for the Department of Administration. "We want to make sure there is transparency to the process," he said. "We want it to be fair."
Source: By DON WALKER, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI), Dec. 22, 2005
A new review of the troubled computer system used to manage state sales-tax receipts has found new problems, resulting in underpayments and overpayments to counties that receive proceeds from the tax. The Legislative Audit Bureau released the report on the troubled Integrated Tax System (ITS) this morning. ...... State officials paid American Management Systems $12.2 million for the system, but the cost has since ballooned to at least $27.6 million. The higher costs also are reflective of changes in the contract and changes in the scope of the computer system. In 2003, software problems within the system forced 57 counties to repay the state $24.5 million after the department overpaid them. Last summer, another glitch resulted in 23 counties being shorted $1.3 million and 35 others being overpaid about $2 million.
Source: James Goodwin, Springfield News-Leader (MO), December 8, 2005
State Auditor Claire McCaskill on Wednesday named a Springfield group home for mentally retarded adults as the facility where "unsatisfactory" living conditions were discovered during a routine audit last month. Among problems reported at the Sagamont facility: soiled items in a shower and the prescription drugs of a former client in an unlocked refrigerator marked "Healthy foods." ..... Gene Barnes, president and CEO of the not-for-profit Arc of the Ozarks, which operates Sagamont, said the facility has settled all concerns.