PA. Treasurer Refuses to Approve $3.5 Million in State Payments for No-Bid Website Work

[JPZenger]

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/71a5217314a94268a58b2e1a87833088/PA--Outsourcing-Websites

Excerpt:

"State Treasurer Rob McCord said Wednesday he is refusing to pay nearly $3.5 million to a company that Gov. Tom Corbett's administration hired under a no-bid contract to modernize and manage Pennsylvania's executive-branch websites. McCord said Wednesday he has rejected invoices from a subsidiary of Kansas-based NIC Inc. dating back to January because he is concerned about the legality and propriety of the contract.

"This is a case of the Corbett administration cutting corners regarding contracting practices, inflating contract values beyond the original approved amounts, and using a no-bid process without adequately justifying the reasons," he said. "Not only is it a bad way to do business, it is outside the law, and we have an obligation to the taxpayers to reject these payments."

...The five-year, sole-source contract, whose value is very roughly estimated at $10 million year"

[Curmudgeoness]

1. I have no idea

what it takes to "modernize and manage" the executive branch websites, but I think that this is extreme. How many people could be hired, here in PA, to work on this website for this amount of money???? I cannot imagine that it should cost this much, but I don't really know enough about it.

Beyond that, I always have a problem with any state (or local) government going outside of the state/area for work that can be done by people who are in business here....or residents getting jobs instead of people here. It just doesn't seem right for our tax money to funnel outside of the state.