Recently in Licensing Category

Source: Naples Daily News (FL), Sunday, November 30, 2008

Call it a textbook example of how not to do it.

Some six months after privatizing its building department to save money, the city of Bonita Springs adopts a fee schedule that does the opposite. It actually costs most applicants more money -- up to 10 times more for someone installing a spa.

Worse, the formalization of the fee schedule comes after the privateer has been assessing fees that have been drawing complaints from elected officials, consumers and contractors.

Source: BY FRAN SPIELMAN, Chicago Sun Times (IL), August 8, 2008

The Daley administration is negotiating with a private contractor to take over random drug and alcohol testing of city employees with commercial driver's licenses after the city's in-house program inadvertently excluded more than 800 truck drivers.

Source: Jennifer Misthal, News Press (FL), May 22, 2008

Developers and builders will have an easier time working in Bonita Springs once a private firm assumes the city's community development services.

With CH2M Hill, a Denver-based consultant, Bonita is promising a higher level of service, a shorter wait to receive permits and staff working in Bonita Springs, not Fort Myers.

After hours of debate, the Bonita Springs City Council Wednesday voted unanimously to hire CH2M Hill to handle its permitting and building inspections for $1.5 million.

Source: By Natalie J. Ostgaard, Crookston Times (MN), Thursday, November 16, 2006 1:37 PM CST

A unanimous vote by the Polk County Board of Commissoners Tuesday determined that the license bureau in the Polk County Courthouse will remain open, though a few changes may be in store in the near future. Commissioner Bill Montague made the motion to keep the license bureau running under the county.

....... The board had considered divesting of the county's role in operating the bureau, instead allowing a private business to take over. However, in consulting with state officials, Auditor-Treasurer Jerry Amiot - under whose umbrella the license center currently falls - said they offered no guarantee that the state would approve a different Crookston site should the county-run center close.

Source: By STEVE KRASKE and DAVE HELLING, The Kansas City Star, Sat, Apr. 15, 2006

Federal authorities are investigating Missouri’s network of license fee offices and how they were awarded to political supporters of the Blunt administration, The Kansas City Star has learned. The federal involvement is the second to come to light in Jefferson City recently. FBI agents also have begun interviews involving lobbying practices in the state Capitol, The Star revealed Thursday......... Blunt last year privatized the last 11 state-run offices in the system, meaning that state workers no longer operate any fee offices, including the one in downtown Kansas City. Blunt said the change would serve customers better while saving the state money. Those who run the offices are independent agents who contract with the state. Since Blunt took office, another wrinkle was added to the system: private umbrella companies hire workers for different offices and handle the offices’ cash flow. The company in the Kansas City area is called KCFA Management.

Source: By Jo Mannies, St. Louis POST-DISPATCH, 04/18/2006

Missouri's fee offices, which have long been a sitting governor's most lucrative way to reward political allies, have again touched off controversy. Amid unconfirmed reports of a federal investigation, both major parties attempted Tuesday to put their own spin on how Gov. Matt Blunt has doled out the state's contracts for the 183 offices, which dispense drivers licenses and vehicle plates. The debate is expected to heat up in a few weeks, when state Auditor Claire McCaskill's office releases its audit on 11 of the largest fee offices, which used to be branches of the Department of Revenue. ...... The state Democratic Party and a prominent party activist, Roy Temple, have assembled a list of the firms from state corporation records. Temple has posted many of those records on his blog site, firedupmissouri.com. The lack of official information has frustrated McCaskill. Her audit, to be released in May or June, will deal largely with the transfer of the 11 branch offices into private hands.