Supervisors Privatize Job-Training Services

As union members shouted “shame!” over and over, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday awarded $23 million in contracts to two corporations to run part of the county’s job-training and placement service for welfare recipients.

The contract has been a contentious issue for two years, as supporters argued that it would save taxpayers $4.2 million, but opponents said it was handing corporations money that should go to poor families.

“I cannot believe we are taking this action today,” Supervisor Gloria Molina said. “The county should be ashamed of itself.”

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, the swing vote in the deal, was booed by his normal allies: union members and anti-poverty activists, who had packed the supervisors’ hearing room.

Yaroslavsky said the savings resulting from contracting outweighed concerns about privatizing social services, an issue he said he was sensitive to. Yaroslavsky noted that he, unlike Molina, had opposed welfare reform.

Foes of the deal, he said, wanted the board to “rubber-stamp slogans and disregard the fact that $4.5 million could help a lot of people.”

At the last minute, Yaroslavsky split the contract between Virginia-based Maximus--which had been scheduled to receive the whole $30-million deal but has been attacked by its opponents--and Maryland-based Lockheed Martin.

“An advantage of this approach is that we will not be held hostage to a single contractor,” Yaroslavsky said.

Dividing the pot between the two companies lowered savings to the taxpayer by about $300,000, county officials said.

Much of the debate over the contract has centered on Maximus, which was barred by a New York judge recently from receiving a contract in that state as a result to irregularities in the bid process and has been criticized for its performance in other states. Some supervisors say the company performed poorly when it ran part of the county’s welfare division in the early 1990s. Maximus and others defend its work in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere.

Russ Beliveau, president of governmental affairs for Maximus, assured supervisors Tuesday of his company’s commitment “to offer a total quality operation” in Los Angeles County.

County officials said the intention of contracting the San Fernando and Antelope valleys’ welfare-to-work caseload was to boost the welfare offices’ efficiency and make it easier to cut costs in the future when welfare caseloads shrink.

The union representing county workers, Service Employees International Union Local 660, has threatened a lawsuit. Its leaders contended that workers could do a better job for comparable costs, although a county analysis last week rebutted that assertion.