Members keep up outsourcing fight

Volunteers examine contracts, seeking wasteful, illegal deals

Updated Feb. 22, 2010
Local 1000 members are continuing their three-year campaign to expose waste through overpriced private vendor contracts on several fronts.

“We will keep fighting to show how much taxpayer money California is wasting on contracts for work that can be done at a substantially lower cost by state employees,” Local 1000 President Yvonne Walker said. “This is about transparency in government. This is about showing taxpayers how their money is being spent. This is about increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of state government by shining a light on the contract process.”

Nearly 70 state worker volunteers met last weekend in the Los Angeles area to analyze private vendor contracts to find waste and develop the groundwork for future legal challenges to the State Personnel Board, where Local 1000 has had an 80 percent success rate in overturning wasteful and illegal contracts. This is the second such meeting. In addition, dozens of state workers have been meeting every furlough Friday to review private contracts.

Also, Local 1000 is working with state Assemblymember Mike Eng (D-Monterey Park) to re-introduce legislation that would increase government transparency by putting all state vendor contracts on a searchable Internet database. For two years, the governor has resisted similar legislation, and last year he vetoed a government transparency bill by Eng.

“The state has been unwilling to collect information on private contracts and make it publicly available,” said Marie Harder, a senior information systems analyst and member of Local 1000’s Outsourcing Task Force. “We need to make the state more accountable.”