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Common sense is lost in mad rush to privatize

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published February 20, 2005

Maybe you've seen the ongoing news about the private company that Gov. Jeb Bush hired to mess up the state's personnel system.

As you know, the private sector is always better than the bloated, incompetent government. So naturally, when Bush set out to mess up the state's personnel system, he knew the private sector would do a much better job of messing it up.

So far, it has worked. The job has been behind schedule and over budget since it started. The contract signed in 2002 with the company, Convergys, was for $278.6-million over seven years. So far, it has been amended six times, expanded to $350-million and extended to nine years.

On top of that, the thing has not worked right, issuing incorrect paychecks and benefits to thousands of employees. Frustrated workers who call to get their situation fixed have had to stay on hold for 45 minutes to an hour. (My favorite part was when the state troopers got cheated out of holiday overtime pay.)

Oh, and by the way, some of the folks in the state department that oversees all this then quit their jobs to go to work for Convergys - to lobby the state government on behalf of the company! The state auditor issued a report saying, gee, you think it really was a good idea not including any kind of safeguards in the contract?

And yet, Convergys' only truly fatal mistake has been to mess up some lawmakers' individual benefits. If you are going to bungle a state contract, you should avoid disturbing the Legislature itself, lest, aroused from its torpor, that body slowly swings its attention in your direction, like a wildebeest dimly becoming aware of an odd rustling in the tall grass nearby.

In short, our lawmakers say they now are concerned about privatization. Quotes of "harrumph, harrumph" are issuing forth from Tallahassee.

To which the taxpayers of Florida should scream in frustration:

Hel-LOH! Legislature! YOU DID THIS! You've spent the last six years saying, "Duhhhhh, let's allow Jeb to do any old thing he wants, with no oversight or checks and balances, 'cause we're all, you know, so danged conservative!'

This sudden concern about privatization is like Bucs owner Malcolm Glazer protesting that ticket prices are too high. Or Michael Jackson declaring that celebrities today are just too darned weird.

On the other hand, the Convergys story takes some of the heat off a different critical audit that came out the other day. That one was about the private Internet "portal" that vendors who sell stuff to the state must use. The portal is run by Accenture, which gets a percentage of the action - kind of like the "vig" charged by a bookmaker.

These stories have been building up in a steady background patter. Another one I liked: veiled threats against the licenses of doctors, nurses, dentists and others unless they paid for a "voluntary" subscription to the company of a big Republican campaign contributor that now keeps the records. It sure would be a shame if their records got lost, the state said.

For a while, you could even report to the state you were a private school and get free voucher money from the taxpayers, without having to prove you actually were a school or had any actual students.

Meanwhile, the Department of State paid a couple of million plus to hmm, who was it? Oh, right. Accenture again. That dough was to pay for a list of felons to be purged from the voter rolls that included Democrat-leaning African-Americans, but somehow managed to overlook the purging of Hispanics, who tend to vote Republican. Whoopsie!

There's plenty more. But not enough room to list it.

Not all privatizing of government functions is bad. Sometimes it works great. But our governor and Legislature dived headfirst into a privatization campaign these past few years with a blind ideological fervor, and a sneering contempt for anybody who suggested we needed audits, strings attached to the contracts, checks and balances and ethics rules. Down the road, we will marvel at this strange era, when it was considered more "conservative" NOT to protect the taxpayers' money.

[Last modified February 20, 2005, 00:52:14]