county, office

County office loses personnel and experience

04 Apr 2005 | (News)

The Multnomah County office in charge of contracts and purchasing is suffering from vacancies, lack of training. Morale problems, cutbacks in training and the departure of a handful of top managers plague the office that handles Multnomah County's contracting and procurement.

Officials from the county's business services agency briefed the Board of Commissioners on problems in the office that purchases supplies ranging from copy machines to bullet-proof vests. The office also coordinates contracts, including early literacy programs and senior-citizen center services. Since December, a contract specialist and four senior buyers have left, leaving vacancies in the office's 33 positions.

"We have lost expertise, especially in the department over the past few years in the area of contracting," Dan Kaplan, deputy director of county Business Services, told the board Thursday. The effect, Kaplan said, has been a weakening of the agency charged with negotiating favorable deals for the county.

During the 2003-04 fiscal year, the procurement office managed about $118 million in contracts for human services, construction and office supplies. It is responsible for the procurement of contracts worth more than $75,000, and big-ticket countywide purchases, such as paper products and printers.

"Right now we're hemorrhaging staff. Morale is as low as it's ever been," said Herman L. Brame, interim manager of the Central Procurement & Contract Administration.

Complaints have touched on implementation of "shared services," a plan aimed at re-organizing and streamlining management of Multnomah County's internal operations. The plan, launched two years ago, has stalled without being fully implemented.

At the same time, deep budget cuts and countywide staff reductions have led to the practice of "bumping." Employees whose positions have been eliminated are bumped to other jobs, forcing out employees from those positions.

Procurement and contract work is highly specialized, and staff members ordinarily bring a basic understanding of legal issues and contract writing to the job. Senior buyers also maintain professional certification.

Some of the last employees bumped to the contract office came without those specialized skills. And when training mattered the most, county commissioners eliminated money for professional development, said Tony Mount, director of Business Services, which oversees contracts and procurements.

"This is the kind of thing where the body of knowledge is fairly significant," he said.

When she resigned in January, Franna Hathaway outlined the training problems in a three-page memo that she e-mailed to commissioners on her last day.

Hathaway, a 26-year employee just shy of retirement, had been the top purchasing manager for a decade. She warned in the memo that staffing cuts endangered the county's ability to stay ahead of new state rules governing all contracting for more than $5,000.

"The procurement and contract function is being treated as simply a clerical function anyone can perform," Hathaway wrote.

In order to achieve savings through the state contract rules, caseloads must be leveled out and staff members must be trained, she said. Otherwise, Hathaway wrote, "if the county attempts to use these methods with under-trained and overloaded staff, this will create a significant risk that the county will not only fail to achieve potential savings available from the use of these procurement methods, but that the county procurements will be subject to protests, appeals and, potentially, lawsuits."

Hathaway left for a purchasing job with the city of Portland. Since December, two others top staff members have jumped ship for the city contract office. Another senior manager took a job in Las Vegas, while a lower-level contract manager left for an assignment in a different county agency.

Board of Commissioners Chairwoman Diane Linn and Commissioner Lisa Naito expressed concern about the workload increases that accompanied staff reductions. After the briefing, Linn said she planned to address the training cutbacks in her budget proposal due next month.

"We're managing millions and millions of dollars of contracts and doing it well, and doing it right is very important," Linn added.

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