The World Around You

Let me give you a basic truth, you cannot “bid” every contract the state enters into. It’s a basic truth that Governor Riley would not acknowledge in the campaign and he is paying the price now. Many contracts are for personal or professional services, do you really want legal or architectural or engineering services going to the lowest bidder? I don’t think so.

However, the questions that have been raised about the Governor’s plan to contract with a number of firms for computer services are not valid. As was reported in the Mobile Register,

[Governor's Chief of Staff Troy]King told Holmes and other lawmakers that the 12 firms were selected by a team of state employees who are not political appointees of the administration. They made their choices from a slate of 62 applications submitted to the Information Services Division, essentially the state’s computer department, run under the Finance Department.

Paul Horton, an ISD administrator who helped assemble the agreement, told the committee that he had not had any contact with any of the companies’ representatives or lobbyists during the selection process. “I don’t know who the lobbyists are, and I don’t care,” he said.

Said King, “The governor very easily could have come in and said, ‘Add this firm.’ But he didn’t do that.”

Under the deal, a state agency in need of computer work would first determine if the job could be done by existing state employees. If not, the department would then contact ISD to see if it had employees who could do the work. If ISD could not complete the job, the project would then go to an open bid procedure among the 12 companies selected in the contract submitted Thursday.

King said those companies’ bids on any job would be capped at $85 an hour. After bids are received, the company with the lowest bid would receive the work. The contract’s total payout would not exceed $5,170,710. To spend more, the administration would have to come back to the review panel with a contract extension request.

It sounds like a very fair way to go about the process and is a vast improvement over the way the Siegelman administration awarded contracts for computer services. The legislature has the right to criticize, but they also have the responsibility to truly understand the issues involved and offer alternatives.

Matt Drudge is reporting that Jessica Lynch will have some interesting things to say in her interview with Diane Sawyer that will be broadcast next week. She believes that the military exploited her story in a way that she is not comfortable with. I’m glad to hear that she is able to see the propoganda for what it is. Maybe coming from her the words will have some impact on those who so strongly support the present administration, but I doubt it.