County Privatizing Welfare-to-Work Program Segment

The Board of Supervisors moved Tuesday toward making the county the nation’s largest jurisdiction to privatize part of its program for training welfare recipients and helping them land jobs.

In a 4-1 vote, with Supervisor Gloria Molina opposing, the board directed its welfare office to solicit bids from companies to run 25% of its job-training and placement program, known as GAIN. And supervisors criticized staff members for their conduct during a previous bid solicitation, saying the welfare office had skewed the numbers to make it appear more cost-effective to keep the operation run by public employees.

After county staff told the board last summer it would be cheaper to keep GAIN county-run, skeptical supervisors hired Orion Consulting to evaluate whether the county had properly conducted the bids. Orion found that the county had inflated the cost to the private sector by expecting them to perform at a higher level than the county.

On Tuesday, welfare director Lynn Bayer said the skew was unintentional. Bayer said her agency had assumed a certain level of performance based on experience, only to find its record tapering off after the bids were solicited.