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Slipshod Contracting Strikes Again: LADOT Wastes $855K

According to an audit by Controller Wendy Greuel, the City Department of Transportation (LADOT) “wasted at least $855,000 of taxpayer dollars” on GPS devices for parking enforcement vehicles. (The devices are known as Automated Vehicle Locator Systems, or AVLS.)

The details of the report are here, and they're pretty scary. Some highlights:

• LADOT had the option in May 2006, to purchase the devices for $1, but inexplicably decided to continue leasing the equipment – at an additional cost of $577,584 to taxpayers over the past four years.

• LADOT has continued to pay for the monthly equipment lease and air service for 178 AVLS units which have been in storage since 2008. At a monthly cost of $7,462, this is a total of $141,773 in wasted City funds.

• LADOT lacks an adequate inventory control to properly account for AVLS equipment and cannot account for 44 units.

• When LADOT was notified that its existing AVLS air carrier was leaving the industry and that it would need to change providers, it amended its contract requesting $213,110 in new hardware and software to accommodate the change in service. Yet the contract's warranty explicitly stated that ISR would cover these costs.

• The department's original contract for $1.57 million has been amended seven times, which has resulted in the City spending more than $4 million to date. This last point illustrates a severe problem with the City's contracting policies. Often, rather than submit expiring contracts for bids, City departments simply amend and extend the original contracts, in essence extending their lives without bothering to check if someone else–including City departments–could do the work for less or more efficiently.

As Azar Nejad, an engineer with the LADOT explains, “Extending contracts without putting them out for re-bidding flies in the face of the very notion of accountability. Public sector departments should review contracts with the utmost care before renewing or extending them.”

We here at Accountable California are curious: do you know of other contracts that have been extended rather than submitted for re-bidding? Go to our tipline and tell us about them. After all, it was an anonymous tipster that led the Controller to perform her valuable audit. Let's see what else we can discover together.

—Lowell Goodman Lowell Goodman is the Communications Specialist for the Center for Public Accountability.

Los Angeles Area

The Power of Unions

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(Full disclosure: I am an employee of the City of Los Angeles. And my union was one of the unions involved in the negotiations. – promoted by shayera)

The Los Angeles Daily News is reporting that 6 unions, negotiating together have come to an amiable contract agreement. Details are found in the article A sweet deal for city unions.
Speaking as a City employee and as a member of one of the unions referenced in the article, I can not verify whether or not the details of the contract as stated by the paper are correct. I haven’t seen a copy of the proposal yet.
But what I wanted to highlight was that the negotiations encompass 22,000 employees across the City.

The civilian coalition in the recent talks included Service Employees International Union Local 721, representing 9,160 workers from custodians and trash-truck drivers to street-services employees.

It also represented 9,000 American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 36 employees, including clerical workers, librarians, professional medical employees, Community Redevelopment Agency workers, and mostly part-time Recreation and Parks employees.

Other unions include the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 501; Laborers International Union Local 777; Los Angeles/Orange County Building & Construction Trades Council; and Teamsters Local 911.