Home-Care Contract for Disabled Approved

Avoiding a showdown with the state, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday changed its mind and approved a $10.5-million, two-year contract with a Chicago firm to provide homemaker services for the elderly and disabled.

State and county officials have been at odds over who should be able to pick the company to perform the housekeeping work--the state, which provides the money, or the county, which administers the program.

National & Homecare Systems of Chicago was the lowest bidder for the county contract last summer and officials from the state Department of Social Services said that the firm should have been awarded the contract.

After voting to do just that, county supervisors in October reversed themselves and decided instead to put the contract out for bid once again.

The reason for the rebidding, supervisors said at the time, were problems with the way the contract was written and the suspicion that National enjoyed an unfair advantage over its only competitor, Remedy Home and Health Care.

The rebidding never happened, however. Under pressure from the state--and swayed by incentives from National--supervisors decided Wednesday to stick with National after all.

A Major Victory

“It was a major victory for the board,” said County Supervisor Susan Golding. “The issues were resolved with cooperation with the state. It was a win-win situation for both the state and the (County) of San Diego.” The contract with National approved on Wednesday also cheered representatives of the United Domestic Workers of America local in San Diego because it guaranteed wage increases for beginning workers in the program. The original proposal made by National would have actually cut wages and frozen them for two years.

Under the program, about 2,200 poor elderly and disabled persons throughout the county receive assistance with shopping, cooking, cleaning and other chores.

The purpose of the program is to reduce public costs by enabling people who can not care for themselves to remain in their own homes, rather than be placed in nursing homes or other public facilities.

Remedy has held the contract and employed 600 workers to perform the housekeeping tasks, yet National appeared to be the winning bidder for the work last summer when its proposal came in $1.1 million less than Remedy’s.

Part of the difference came from National’s suggestion to cut and freeze wages for domestic workers.

On the low end of the scale, National proposed keeping starting wages at $3.65 an hour, although the nation’s minimum wage will be increased in July to $4.25; on the high end of the wage scale, National proposed scaling back some of the wages that, under a previous contract, were as high as $7.25 an hour.

Agreement Extended

But by a 3-2 vote in October, supervisors decided not to award the contract to either company. Supervisors said they believed that National had an unfair advantage because it found out how much Remedy was paying the workers under the old contract.

Yet Remedy’s old contract was set to expire in November, and county officials were forced to seek permission from the state to extend that agreement for three months to allow for the rebidding process.

State officials, however, agreed to only a 30-day extension and objected to the rebidding because they believed National should have been awarded the contract. State officials threatened to cut off the $425,000 a month in payments for the program if the rebidding process continued.

In December, county supervisors ignored those warnings and voted once again to proceed with the rebidding--setting the stage for a showdown with the state.

The issue over the administrative wrangling became who would call the shots on the local program--the county or the state.

Rather than face-off, the county and National struck a compromise. National agreed to pay its workers more--beginning with the prevailing minimum wage.

“The lower bidder has agreed to increase the starting wage. Because everybody has made some compromises, we have end up in a spot that we can all live with,” said Loren Suter, deputy director of the state Department of Social Services. In addition, the state agreed to work with supervisors in fashioning a policy that dictates who should call the shots in local programming paid for with state money. Golding said the state sent a letter to supervisors on Wednesday acknowledging their concerns about local control and promising to work out a new policy.

said.

“The board of supervisors had a right to be concerned about local control and that they do have a legitimate role in the process. But, the state is providing the dollars and we also have a role,” Suter said.