"Clean Contracting" for Connecticut

"Clean Contracting" for Connecticut

Putting Reform to Work for Our Members and the Public We Serve

P-4 Council Member Denise Eaton Shared Concerns Over Outsourced Highway and Bridge Inspections with Channel 8's Viewers in 2008

Over two decades, our Union members repeatedly warned that the Rowland and Rell Administrations' failure to invest in the public workforce was putting the health and safety of our communities at risk. Critical shortages on transportation projects, environmental health protection, information technology, and law enforcement were being used to justify outsourcing vital services to profit-motivated private corporate interests.

Failure to reform the state's privatization policy was at the center of several high profile examples of corruption in contracting-out public services beginning in 2006:

The "Little Dig," which resulted in hundreds of defective storm drains and bridge desks on I-84 and put the lives of motorists at risk;
The "Homeland Insecurity" fiasco, caused by a private consultants' failure to overhaul the state's criminal data system; and
The "Data-gate" scandal, which resulted when incompetent IT consultants put Connecticut residents' personal information at risk.

With strong Union backing, the General Assembly passed a "clean contracting" compromise bill in September 2007. When Governor M. Jodi Rell signed it into law, a new standard was set for protecting our families' health, safety, and tax dollars.

But when her Administration failed to make implementation of the new law a priority, members of our Union and our partners in the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) spoke out. After moving her to complete her appointments to the stronger State Contracting Standards Board (SCSB) the legislation created, we urged all elected leaders to fully support its mission of ensuring open and transparent contracting processes.

Now that the board is finally up and running and able to exercise greater oversight, management in some public agencies and the special interests they are far too cozy with are resisting reform. The Department of Transportation (DOT) and a lobbying group for private consultants appear to have teamed up to evade their responsibility under the law to justify outsourcing as both cost-effective and at the same time not a risk to public health or safety.

But our members' advocacy paid-off when the DOT was forced to reveal to the board that it was allowing taxpayers to spend twice as much for private consultants to inspect highway and rail bridges. The nearly $7 million that could be saved annually if these services were delivered by agency staff could be used for infrastructure maintenance and repair -- as well as to fund the SCSB's ongoing efforts to root out waste in contracted-out public projects.