Bad and good on privatization of child welfare services

The bill that was supposed to “clean up” the highly flawed 2009 law setting up pilot projects to privatize part of DSHS Child Welfare Services came up for a hearing Thursday in the House Early Learning and Children’s Services Committee.
 
But HB 3121 is itself highly flawed and completely unacceptable.
 
It was supposed to honor the competitive contracting law, but instead the exclusion enacted last year remains and directs the Transformation Design Committee (TDC) to create a whole new process – after the pilot projects are up and running. HB 3121 also omits two recommendations from TDC.

“Here again in this bill, is another outright offensive attempt to circumvent the collective bargaining law, this time by tasking the Transformation Design Committee (TDC) to create the process for state employees to compete for the contracts,” Federation Lobbyist Alia Griffing told the committee. “This is not language that we take lightly.
 
“The Federation has grave concerns about putting our members’ jobs in the hands of a committee that has already been seriously undermined” by the independent roll-out of “master contracts” by Children’s Administration, in conflict with the expectation of TDC involvement in the development.  Instead, the agency rolled out the “master contracting” model, prepackaged for the committee’s consumption at the December meeting, Griffing said.
 
So that’s the bad.
 
The good is House Bill 3143, sponsored by Rep. Larry Haler, R-8th Dist., and initiated by the Federation. It prevents demonstration sites from moving forward unless specifically funded and it prevents the agency from implementing the “supervising agency” (broker) model until tested through the demo sites.
 
So, call 1-800-562-6000 and urge your two House members to oppose HB 3121 and instead support HB 3143.