State to Speed Up Bidding for Reservations Pact

State parks officials, responding to legislative criticism, agreed Wednesday to speed up by eight months the replacement of a questionable contract for the taking of campground and Hearst Castle reservations.

Questions were raised about the current contract when an administrative law judge ruled that parks officials abused their discretion in awarding it last year to Mistix, a firm that had no track record, had filed a false financial statement and was the highest bidder.

Parks and Recreation Department officials acknowledged last month that the administrative law judge was correct. But they said it would take them nearly two years to award a replacement for the five-year, $15-million contract, which would then be 3 years old.

Mistix in Interim

William S. Briner, then director of parks and recreation, said it was in the public interest to allow Mistix to continue taking reservations while the contract was put out for new bids. He said Mistix, which was acquired after it won the contract by the publicly held G-TECH Corp., was doing a good job.

That action by Briner, who resigned effective this week, piqued the interest of some legislators and legislative staff members.

“Here was a case where just outright fraud took place, and here Briner is proposing to keep them in place for two years,” said Steve Larson, staff director for the state Senate Budget Committee. “That sounded really weird.”

Larson noted that the parks department had taken only four months to make the original computer-ticketing award to Mistix.

A Senate budget subcommittee questioned parks officials about the contract at a hearing Tuesday.

‘Situation Smells’

“I think the whole situation smells,” Sen. Alfred E. Alquist (D-San Jose), budget committee chairman, said afterward. “. . . It’s not a question of whether Mistix is doing the job now. It’s a question of the integrity of the bidding process.”

Acting Parks and Recreation Director Les McCargo said he agreed to “accelerate” the start date of a new contract from November, 1988, to March, 1988.

“(Parks officials) told me that they will call for new bids before the end of the year,” Alquist said. “I still think that’s taking an unnecessarily long time, but we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.”

Spokesmen for Ticketron and Ticketmaster, the two more experienced computer-ticketing firms that lost the original contract to Mistix, have said their firms could take over the state parks reservations system within a month.

However, legislators were concerned that forcing parks officials to proceed hastily might lead to an inefficient reservations system and harm the interests of its users, Larson said.