New York’s taxpayers stuck with ‘stick-around’ contractors
By SHERRY HALBROOK

Ever heard of “Stick Around Syndrome”?

You may not have heard the phrase before, but if you work for the state of New York the odds are very good that you know all too well the situation it describes — contractors and consultants hired by a state agency for a specific short-term job or project, but who never leave.

“Typically, these consultants have been working for an agency for more than five years and cost significantly more than a comparable state employee,” said PEF President Roger Benson.

“Once they get their foot in the door, you just can’t get rid of them. They’ll come up with any excuse to stick around.”

Why get stuck?
“It’s easy to understand why the consultants want to stick around,” Benson said. “It’s incredibly profitable for them to keep milking these contracts for all they can get.

“Politicians win two ways. They can tell voters they’ve cut the state workforce, and they can collect big campaign contributions from the grateful contractors,” Benson said.

Stick-around gets around
A recent story in Governing Magazine that coined the term Stick-Around Syndrome reported on the problem in Wisconsin, Texas, Michigan and California — states where some leaders have begun to realize they are paying far too much for consultants working on never-ending projects.

“We found a clear pattern of New York state agencies filling contract after contract with the same consultants to perform similar services,” said Tom Cetrino, who heads PEF’s Department of Civil Service Enforcement that has been extensively researching such issues.

Makin’ NY’s Top 10
PEF identified the “top 10 most frequently used (by NY state agencies) consultants for information technology (IT) and engineering services” and found they pop up again and again on the list of contractors, often within the same agency.

The rewards for scoring in the Top 10 are enormous.

The state has awarded contracts totalling approximately $649.7 million since 1992 to the Top 10 IT consultants, and $706.6 million to the Top 10 engineering service consultants. Some of those contracts have roots back to ’78.

They’re hooked
The state agencies most dependent on IT contractors are the Department of Taxation and Finance (DTF) with 94 contracts with Top 10 contractors since 1998, and the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) which weighed in with 92.

Between 1998 and 2004, DTF held 28 IT contracts with Advanced Business Technologies Corp, 14 with Unisys Corporation and 13 with Currier McCabe & Associates Inc.

Over a five-year period, OCFS has entered into 23 IT contracts with Tailwind Associates and at least 20 contracts with PSI International Inc.
The state Transportation Department is the top NYS-agency sugar daddy for engineering consultants.

For example, since 1988, it’s given Stantec (formerly Sear Brown) 27 contracts, Clough Harbour & Associates 21 and Vollmer Associates 17.

Is your state agency wasting money on private consultants/ contractors? If it is, get the facts and share them with PEF. Contact the PEF Department of Civil Service Enforcement at  (518) 785-1900 or (800) 342-4306, ext. 280.
 
So far, PEF and the NYS Fiscal Policy Institute have identified more than $500 million wasted annually by the state on “deals” with private contractors for work that could be done better and for substantially less by state employees.

The Communicator May 2007

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