There are hundreds of these companies that contract with agencies in the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, and the salaries of the executives running them are often above $100,000 as well. In 2009, we looked at a few of the firms that contract with the Department of Developmental Services. A few examples from among the vendors that we reviewed that year were the following:
- Vinfen: 8 executives making over $100,000 a year, with the president making $376,000, including benefits.
- Justice Resource Institute: 7 executives making over $100,000.
- Seven Hills: 4 executives making over $100,000, with the president and CEO making $520,600, including benefits.
- Work, Inc.: 5 executives making over $100,000.
These salaries are a problem because there are so many of these companies contracting with the state. As services once provided by state employees have been privatized over the past 30 years, the number of people drawing high salaries in the contractor industry has grown exponentially. Those salaries are part of the cost of care in the community-based system, which the taxpayers fund.
While the administration has tried to portray the DDS developmental centers, for instance, as unduly expensive, there used to be only one set of administrators in each center drawing relatively high salaries (although few, if any, of them made salaries above $100,000).
The executives of the contracting firms that have replaced the developmental centers and other state-run operations constitute a new and even more expensive layer of bureaucracy that is soaking up state funds. This is one reason why we believe privatization in general doesn't result in predicted savings.
There is also an increased potential for fraud and waste in our highly dispersed, contracting system because the state doesn't have the capacity to oversee it nearly as well as it was able to oversee functions once provided by state employees. This has left the contracting system vulnerable to fraud, waste, and poor care provided by inadequately trained direct-care workers, whose salaries, by contrast, are low.
In Wisconsin, we are witnessing a battle over the value of public service as state employees there rise up to defend their collective bargaining rights. Let's not forget, though, that privatization over the long run is just as effective as the direct elimination of collective bargaining agreements in weakening public employee unions and workers' rights. Both strategies ultimately throw people out of work and produce a largely low-paid, non-union workforce.
And both strategies tend to result in an expansion of contracted services as the public sector loses more and more of its capacity to manage its affairs due to continual downsizing of its workforce.
The difference between these two strategies is that privatization is not seen as being as overtly confrontational as eliminating collective bargaining. So our own governor can engage in major privatization initiatives that weaken public unions while still claiming to be a friend to them.
That's why we hope that in addition to scrutinzing the salaries of the executives of the independent agencies, the Patrick administration will at least take a look at the state's human services contracting system. We think there is as much, if not more, fertile ground for savings there.
How did these enormous executive salaries figure into the administration’s “cost analysis”?
Under Harry Spence, for example, what was then DSS spent more on “consultants” then DSS spent of services to children, services to families – or social workers for that matter. I heard Commissioner Spence testify to this, under questioning from the House Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect (a special committee then chaired by Representative John Rogers).
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p>Similary, despite the phony outcry about private attorneys being paid $50 an hour, where is the outcry about consultant attorneys being paid $400 an hour, $700 an hour or more by constitutional officers or the legislature when legal work is outsourced by those entities?
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p>Just who is really minding the store, anyway!
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p>As Noah Webster said:
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p>or
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p>As George Washington said, not long before he shocked Europe by stepping down, not seeking another term and refusing to be made a king:
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p>We need to be wary of government done in the shadows, using revolving doors, and consolidated in the executive.
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p>To me the Governor’s plan for indigent defense looks more like a power grab, and someone who wants to be master of how indigent defense is done, not like someone who is mindful of separation of powers or the danger of a master (executive) who is too strong. The current indigent defense system is well run, constitutional, and carefully audited.
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p>Just who audits and oversees all these consultants and contractors who are replacing employees, and creating a misleading, possibly false claim of a reduced payroll?
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p>Reducing staff, and claiming to shrink government while paying bloated sums to consultants who are under the radar, and not accountable to anyone is NO improvement.
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p>And just what happens to unions when employees wash away, and consultants and contractors take their places??
That these same contractors are now advocating that their private employees should get state employee perks, under the guise of building “a strong human service system.”
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p>http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/d…
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p>Yeah, let’s see if the Governor has the castinets to look at those salaries. I don’t, however, have high hopes. He hired a vendor advocate as head of the Department of Developmental Disabilities (Elin Howe) and I haven’t seen her doing the sevillanas yet.
Why Elin Howe would leave, what must have been a very lucrative position with a huge vendor, to make what must be peanuts in comparison as the commissioner of DDS.
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p>Can anyone help me with this?
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The examples here–just 4–account for just under $4,000,000. The last time I checked there were about 300 vendors on the DDS approved vendor list that is posted right on the DDS website. Do the math.