As a leader and member of the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), I find Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s lack of action in bringing the Connecticut Contracting Standards Board to its full membership an outrage.
As the Hartford Business Journal pointed out in November [“State Contract Reform Languishes,” Nov. 16], Gov. Rell was late in getting the ball rolling and she is still stalling. The governor has failed to make all of her appointments to the board, holding up its members’ ability to meet and carry out their statutorily mandated mission to ensure open and transparent contracting processes, which would save taxpayer dollars and improve delivery of public services.
It is discouraging to realize that more than one year has passed since the first appointments. Connecticut’s continuing economic crisis is fundamentally a revenue problem, but if the state’s Contracting Standards Board was in place and doing its job, we could at least develop a framework to guide future decisions on privatization and thereby avoid the pitfalls that go along with creating a costly shadow government of contractors.
Time and again, Gov. Rell has said the state must save money wherever possible, that no stone must be left unturned. But one of the most straightforward solutions — to find efficiencies in the state contracting process, to hold contractors accountable and to make sure that the costs and benefits of these contracts are scrutinized — has fallen by the wayside.
Instead, she has made deep and painful cuts to vital social service programs, such as those that help the elderly, the unemployed, and children with special needs, to name a few.
In addition to saving money, the Contracting Standards Board could provide a citizen’s view into state government spending, making government more open and accountable. It is no surprise that Gov. Rell, who succeeded the disgraced John Rowland, likes to talk about clean government. But when it comes to action, she’s absent. She did her best to kill the clean contracting bill by vetoing it three times. Now that it’s law, she can’t stop with a veto pen, so she’s trying to kill it with inaction. We may never know if her stalling has led to wasteful spending in the midst of an economic crisis, but that’s pretty likely.
The statute calling for the creation of the board went into effect Jan. 1, 2009, and all but one legislative appointment was completed by last fall. The board would have been meeting, establishing standards for state contractors and implementing those if Gov. Rell had made her appointments in a timely manner. Its members would have also been ready to begin performing the cost-benefit analysis on requests for proposals and acquisitions the “clean contracting” law now requires as of January 1, 2010.
When Gov. Rell first came into office in 2004, her administration’s budget chief, Office of Policy and Management Secretary Robert Genuario, stated publicly that the administration did not have a full inventory on the number of current state contracts or their monetary value. He made similar disclosures three years later, during hearings into the Interstate 84-outsourcing fiasco in which contractors installed storm drains to nowhere and upside down bridge decks.
Let’s not forget that Gov. John Rowland resigned, in part, because he influenced state contracts for his own financial gain. Since that time, after the clean contracting law was enacted, which created the Contracting Standards Board, contracts have been awarded that raise questions about the bidding process. The municipal 911 emergency notification system bid had inconsistencies. One of the Department of Transportation’s contracts is under investigation and there’s been plenty of publicity about the appropriateness and the legality of the governor’s contract with UConn pollster Ken Dautrich. Clearly, there is a need for the board’s oversight.
Connecticut uses private contractors for all sorts of services. Many private nonprofits provide services for the state’s social service programs. Because the board is inactive, it cannot assess the efficiency of these providers as it is mandated to do. It also cannot receive the cost-benefit analysis that agencies are required to provide as a result of the new law. Gov. Rell has made some, but not all, of her appointments. She’s had a year to do so — plenty of time, even by political standards. Precious time and precious dollars are being squandered by the governor who lauds herself as the clean government reformer and the guardian of the state’s pocketbook. Connecticut cannot afford to let the governor off the hook for this lack of action and leadership.
Sal Luciano is the executive director of Council 4 AFSCME and legislative appointee to the board.
