Leaders and members of the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) criticized Governor M. Jodi Rell today for her lack of action in bringing the Connecticut Contracting Standards Board to its full membership. 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 in state government, which would save taxpayer dollars and improve delivery of public services.
"It is no surprise that Governor Rell, who succeeded the disgraced John Rowland, likes to talk about clean government. But when it comes to action, she's absent," said Sal Luciano, Executive Director of Council 4 AFSCME, a legislative appointee to the Board."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. If it's a lack of leadership it's inexcusable. If it's anything else it's outrageous."
The statute calling for the creation of the Board went into effect January 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 Governor 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.
"It is discouraging to realize that more than one year has passed since I was appointed," said Charles Casella, a retired engineer from the Department of Transportation and member of CSEA/SEIU Local 2001 who was selected to serve by the legislature. "In that year, the state has missed the opportunity to reduce spending on the procurement of goods and services, thereby reducing the budget deficit that is a concern to all. It is also possible that the work of the Board may result in savings to Connecticut municipalities."
When Governor Rell first came into office in 2004, her 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.
Council 4 and CSEA are two of the thirteen unions in the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), which serves to unite approximately 50,000 Connecticut State Employees to address issues of common concern. To learn more about the coalition's campaign for a fair budget and a livable state with great public services visit www.InThisTogetherCT.org. |
