Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Unanimously Adopts First-Ever Consensus, Strategic Plan for Economic Development (PRWeb via Yahoo! News)
Five-year 2010-2014 plan will serve as the blueprint for economic development priorities in the region.
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Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Unanimously Adopts First-Ever Consensus, Strategic Plan for Economic Development (PRWeb via Yahoo! News)
SoCalSkier on Sat, 26th Dec 2009 3:31 pm
The Board of Supervisors appears to be taking some very positive steps lately towards the improvement of LA County. Their strategic plan for economic development makes a lot of sense and I sincerely hope they work to fulfilling those goals. Their recent reissuance of an RFP for vendor services to operate the county’s GAIN case management services (a welfare-to-work program) looks like a good first step. I expect the same two companies will submit proposals as last year – Maximus Inc. and Policy Studies Inc. (PSI).
Maximus has maintained its contract with the county for many years now, but its cost to the taxpayers keeps skyrocketing. If the new bids resemble those from last year, we can expect that the Maximus bid will cost taxpayers almost a million dollars more than PSI’s.
What’s more, Maximus has a track record of poor performance. Under its latest three year contract, Maximus has been cited repeatedly for failing to meet required goals in 5 of 8 categories (according to the LA Times). Last year, the Department of Public Social Services favored PSI based on scoring done on the two companies by a neutral third party. PSI scored 9,082 out of 9,616 possible points in the procurement process, whereas Maximus scored 7,824 of 9,616. PSI won by a 13% margin on technical score and also submitted the lowest bid, which was 6% cheaper.
Even worse, Maximus has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to buy the support of the Board of Supervisors through lobbying and campaign donations.
I, for one, am grateful that the BOS reissued the RFP and am confident they will select the right choice for LA. In these tough economic times, we need our local elected officials to scrutinize how every tax dollar is being spent and eliminate waste wherever possible. I hope we see a changing of the guard here very soon.