We have heard time and time again from Republicans/Conservatives how private enterprise can do the job better than government; that government workers are too expensive; and if you can find it in the yellow-pages the government workers shouldn’t be doing it.
Tony Saavedra at the Orange County Register has a report out about the County blowing $400,000 on computer systems that never materialized.
Tony reports:
The county has pulled the plug on a Dallas-based computer contractor that collected $400,000 as part of a crucial project but fell so far behind schedule that an emergency replacement was hired.
County Auditor-Controller David Sundstrom said his office is trying to determine how much of the work done by Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) can be salvaged. The county is also negotiating with ACS to allow the company to finish a related $1.1 million project, but at a lower price, Sundstrom said.
Affiliated Computer Service is in charge of the county’s Data Center, the main financial database for all county departments. The company was asked to create 160 computer “interfaces” through which the computer system could communicate with various departments.
After 11 months, none had been created, Sundstrom said.
If this sounds familiar you’re right. We’ve been here before.
March 15, 2004
Orange County Will Spend $475,000 More on Claims Submission Because of Delayed Implementation of Computer System
The Orange County Health Care Agency will have to spend an additional $475,000 to submit Medi-Cal bills to the state manually this year while software company Cerner completes installment of an $11 million computer system that was originally scheduled to be operational by July 2002, the Orange County Register reports (Brown/Lourie, Orange County Register, 3/11).
The LATimes reported on June 14th that:
Orange County plans to set aside $2.75 million in the coming fiscal year to pay for legal battles, including its lawsuit to roll back sheriff’s deputies’ pensions — signaling the potential for a costly fight.
Board of Supervisors Chairman John Moorlach, who led the drive to sue over the pension deal, said Friday that he did not expect the case to turn into a protracted and expensive legal battle.
Still, he noted that the case has detoured from its originally expected course. The county pension board, which was named as the defendant, successfully petitioned to move the case into Los Angeles courts. The board has also asked the court to force the county to name additional defendants who would be directly affected by the outcome, Moorlach said.
Each additional legal procedure adds to the cost.
As of its last accounting at the end of November, the county had spent more than $500,000 on researching the pension case before the lawsuit was filed. Costs have mounted since then as court hearings on the case have begun, but the county has not produced any subsequent public accountings.
The county has budgeted $750,000 for a Performance Auditor to review the performance of county departments. Rather than focus on what was clearly a need, reviewing the way information technology contracts are awarded and managed, in the same meeting the Board confirmed the Auditors first assignment:
S98A. Office of the Performance Audit Director –  Authorize Office of the Performance Audit Director to perform a study of overtime usage in Sheriff-Corner Department; and direct this study be commenced immediately – All Districts
Any moron, other than the Emperor Chicken Little Moorlach, knows that overtime is a symptom of not having enough staff to fill the shifts available. No real need to do much analysis here. Hire more Deputies, work them full time, and you have less overtime. Even Supervisor Bill Campbell should know this from his days running his Taco Bell franchise.
But no, they blow money studying stuff they already know the answers to and pursuing frivolous lawsuits.They blow money raising the car allowance for themselves and senior managers. They throw hundreds of thousands of dollars chasing after red-herring while cutting services for the people of Orange County who need them most, the working poor.
These idiots are more comfortable chasing their tails than chasing the rats stealing our cheese. For the record, the rats are not county workers. The rats are the contractors who they give away millions of dollars to without any oversight or accountability.
Look at the money and resources that the county is wasting on Campbell’s obsession with somehow creating a county-wide wifi network, which is just another way of ensuring that Republican consultants get some work.
The failure of the Earthlink experiment in Anaheim confirmed that there’s no business model to support slow, spotty wireless service that won’t penetrate stucco walls or foliage, yet Campbell keeps going with this.
And trust some of the stupes to continue trying to study the idea of a toll through, above, or tunneled below the Santa Ana River, after every study has shown that it’s a stupid, expensive idea.
Then there’s Moorlach’s big ideas, none of which ever get anywhere, while he wastes county resources pursuing his own quixotic goals.
Let’s see, $450k plus $475k plus a few mil here and there…..ahhh just call it $1.5 million dollars of taxpayer money. Only an idiot bureacracy like Orange County would actually spend money on something for nothing and then focus on the real problem: county employees making fat paychecks on massive overtime because the BoS members, our elected stumblebums, haven’t figured out that no one can afford to work for this county. Look out your window, John. Do you honestly see hundreds of people lined up around the block waiting to put their application in for a county job? Get serious…..
These Republicans are pikers.
Let’s get some Democrats in office, so can see some REAL money wasters.