Story and Photo By SHERRY HALBROOK
Chances are, when you’re driving down the interstate and see an LED message about road or traffic conditions ahead, you are more concerned with lost time and inconvenience than with wasted tax dollars.
But both hazards are worth considering.
While the LEDs may look the same whether you are on the Long Island Expressway or the Northway, the costs can be very different depending on whether the system is being operated by state Transportation Department (DOT) employees or private consultants.
A contractor with a long, troubled record is a popular consultant with the state Department of Transportation (DOT) and that includes contracts for operating part of the state’s central and regional electronic traffic information and management systems.
Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas Inc. (PBQ&D), with the assistance of Dunn Engineering Associates P.C. (a subconsultant), operates the state’s Information for Motorists (INFORM) system on Long Island that includes a control center and computers in Hauppauge which communicate with the LEDs on state highways in the region.
Sinking
feelingPBQ&D was the construction management contractor on the infamous Boston Big Dig tunnel project that ran eight years and $12 billion over budget. Shortly after it opened in 2006, a woman was crushed in the tunnel by 12 tons of falling ceiling tiles. The state of Massachusetts and others sued PBQ&D for “gross negligence.”
In 1994 and ’95, PBQ&D engineers approved substitutions on tunnel projects in Los Angeles that resulted in sinking sidewalks, the collapse of an 80-foot section of Hollywood Boulevard and damage to surrounding buildings.
Consultant no bargain
“DOT chose to contract INFORM out to PBQ&D, rather than use its own employees for 30 percent less cost to operate a system that needs to be staffed every day and involves few, if any, changes in job tasks,” said PEF Director of Civil Service Enforcement Tom Cetrino.
The most recent state INFORM contract with PBQ&D cost approximately $13 million over five years.
“It cost at least $2.3 million more for the state to contract out these services than it would have cost to hire more state workers to do the job,” Cetrino said. “And PBQ&D has already been designated to get the next INFORM contract.”
“We estimate that since 1995 DOT could have saved approximately $4.2 million using only state employees to staff INFORM. And, if it spends the same amount of money on the next contract as it spent on the last two, the total taxpayer dollars wasted on consultants for this job since 1995 will reach an estimated $7 million.”
DOT pays the consultant more for every job title but two, than it pays its state employees in comparable titles.
For instance, the five–year average hourly rate (based on total cost) billed for the consultant’s title of “principal engineer/systems administrator was 88 percent greater than the five-year average hourly rate for the comparable state employee title of “manager of data processing technical services (system programming) state employee salary-grade-27 title.
Go figure
“DOT’s repeated decisions to pay more for private consultants to do this work begs the question: Why?” Cetrino said. “It’s clearly not because state employees can’t do this work, or because it’s a temporary need for specialized skills. These programs are long-term and expanding.”
A number of state employees currently work at the Statewide Incident Command Center (STICC) and the Capital Region Transportation Management Center (CRTMC).
According to a PEF member at the statewide command center, these employees perform the same tasks as required of consultants in the INFORM contract.
But in March, DOT awarded a new contract to Dunn Engineering (the subconsultant for INFORM) to perform some functions at the STICC and the CRTMC. DOT also is hiring some additional state staff for the STICC.
“We will study and report on that contract, too,” Cetrino said. “The detailed data and analysis for all of our studies of state contracts is at stopprivatization.com.”
“It is outrageous that DOT awarded this contract without providing any justification for why it did not use state employees who do the same work at a lower cost,” said PEF President Ken Brynien. “That’s why PEF is working to put in place a cost-benefit analysis process either through legislative or administrative action.