Saturday, July 15, 2006

Of course they gave to Doyle's campaign

Of course a company awarded a huge contract gave to Jim Doyle's campaign- they all seem to- don't they?

Just like magic- a company gets a huge state contract and magically money appears in Jim Doyle's campaign chest.

It really makes you wonder what is being said during these meetings before these contracts are awarded- "You scratch my back and I will scratch yours"?

Spivak and Bice-

Technical difficulties

The folks in the state treasurer's office are a little less than impressed with the efforts by Gov. Jim Doyle's administration to consolidate the state's computer servers under a controversial contract.

Last week, just before noon, the agency's system went down, and it took officials at the Department of Administration about an hour to respond to calls and 1½ hours to fix the problem. Deputy Treasurer John Rader said he had been promised that such problems would be resolved almost instantaneously under the new system.

But DOA honcho Sean Dilweg said he considered the response time "very adequate." By comparison, he said, it took three hours to bring the system back up at one of his agency's divisions just over the weekend.

Overall, Dilweg said, his office is satisfied with the work being done under the direction of Crowe Chizek, an Indianapolis-based firm that has so far been paid $5.5 million on the project, which Dilweg said will save the state $8 million annually. After the contract was awarded, employees at Crowe Chizek gave $17,500 to Doyle's campaign fund.

But Rader said his agency would like out of the deal, noting there would have been real problems had the system gone down an hour earlier. Then, he said, local governments couldn't have withdrawn money from the funds kept by his office.

"If this is an example of assistance when very few agencies' servers are consolidated, what will be the scene when we're all consolidated?" Rader asked DOA Deputy Secretary Gina Frank-Reece in a July 5 memo. "In addition, if we were still on our own, we would be saving about $30,000 per year."

More problems at a higher price - sounds like government reform to us.

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