Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Lawmakers slam no-bid contract

A state agency decided it didn't have to seek bids because of two exemptions.

By STEVE BOUSQUET
Published February 8, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - The state Department of Juvenile Justice has angered legislators who oversee the agency after it awarded a $1.9-million contract without competitive bids.

As a result, the department now plans to seek bids for part of the project. The North Carolina company it hired without bids will stay on to avoid further delays.

Evidence Based Associates of Wilmington, N.C. was awarded the $1.9-million contract in October to implement a new program to steer delinquents away from long stays in treatment centers by using intensive therapy, family counseling and electronic bracelets, all under court supervision. If the program works, it could lower the number of troubled kids who repeatedly break the law, reducing crime and saving tax dollars.

Known as Redirections, the program is under way in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Pensacola, using two types of intensive therapy to alter the behavior of tough children. The first youngsters in the program are typically repeat offenders who have violated probation for acts such as truancy.

Legislators appropriated $1.9-million to treat 288 youths. Halfway through the budget year, about 50 kids are enrolled, and some lawmakers worry that the pool of children will be too small to draw meaningful conclusions.

"It is my belief, without any doubt whatsoever, that the department did not follow the intent, the discussions, the agreements that were made by the committee last year," said Rep. Mitch Needelman, R-Melbourne, a member of the House committee overseeing DJJ.

Bernard Warner, DJJ's assistant secretary for probation and corrections, defended the no-bid contract, citing two exemptions in state law he said allowed the agency to skip seeking bids: the Legislature set the payment rate to the contractor and health services are exempt from competitive bids.

Bids would have delayed the start of the project, Warner said.

An attorney for the House, Debby Kearney, concluded that the agency should have sought bids.

Warner said the agency will seek bids for residential services and electronic bracelets, the parts of the program yet to begun, worth about a third of the contract. Evidence Based Associates will remain in charge of the project.

After it was hired in October, Evidence Based Associates hired other firms, without bids as the law allows, to offer therapy and counseling. In Pensacola the firm chose the Henry and Rilla White Foundation, causing more alarm among legislators.

A Florida subsidiary of the White Foundation hired Frank Alarcon, a former DJJ deputy secretary who resigned last year in a massive DJJ shakeup following the death of a teenage boy, Omar Paisley, in a Miami detention center.

Alarcon served briefly last year as deputy director of juvenile justice in Georgia but resigned, citing "personal reasons," and returned to the Tallahassee area.

He emphatically denied any role in the Redirections project. Alarcon said he works as a consultant to a subsidiary of the White Foundation, Correctional Services of Florida, and oversees a program for troubled adolescents in Jacksonville.

State law prohibits Alarcon from lobbying his former agency for two years or from working on a contract he worked on when he was a state employee.

[Last modified February 8, 2005, 00:21:16]