After its second meeting last week, the Budget Solutions Task Force, created to review and potentially cancel private-sector contracts to save money, has taken steps to narrow its focus to the SEIU Local 1000 union’s top five priority contracts, state and union officials have confirmed.
As part of this year’s budget deal, the Brown Administration negotiated terms with SEIU Local 1000 for a side letter agreement that includes a 4.62% pay cut and one required personal leave day per month. As part of the agreement, the task force, comprised of a handful of SEIU representatives and equal number of state government representatives will begin performing a review of state contracts, for work that could be done by state employees with the goal of finding savings for the state.
Narrowing the list to five will allow the group to define the review process that includes a way for both sides to review contracts and gather input from department program staff, according to union spokesperson Marie Harder. The union has already trained representatives to review contracts and developed a process to distribute them to get started, she said.
Prior to last week’s meeting on August 28, the union had provided state officials with a list of contracts totaling more than $2 billion, Cal HR spokesperson Lynelle Jolley confirmed. At the first meeting held on August 1, the union provided an initial list of 67 contracts worth about $1 billion.
Harder said the group has not discussed whether the initial focus will include major IT projects. “IT contracts are a different beast. I have no feel for whether we would tackle any of those,” she said.
The overall review will take shape with monthly task force meetings and additional working group meetings as needed through the end of the year, said Harder.
At a technology industry event this week, Assemblymember Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo) said that legislative hearings could take place next year to review any list of IT and other outsourcing projects that may be brought up by the union.
“Some are questioning to what extent should we be outsourcing IT contracts. I don’t think you are going to see a situation where the state is going to, in-house, be able to develop big projects like Fi$Cal and other projects, we simply don’t have the expertise do do that. I do think one of the questions though… is how do we strike that balance. We’re going to need private vendors to help us develop systems but we also need capability in-house to work with the private vendors developing those systems… our ultimate success depends on being able to take a problem, find the right solution and make sure we can maintain it over time,” Buchanan said.
Harder said union priorities include having state IT staff as part of project development, including when requirements are defined, which will position the state to take over maintenance after a system is launched.
The next task force meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 25, according to Jolley.
