Guinn uncomfortable with approving $100 million in contracts

Thursday, June 10, 1999 | 3:05 a.m.

But Gov. Kenny Guinn, bringing his business experience to bear, said he wants to go over how those contracts are developed and reviewed before doing it again.

"We're going to have to sit down with our own people and they're going to have to justify these," he said adding that a couple of days on his desk isn't enough time to properly review more than 400 contracts.

Guinn said even in that limited time, he saw far too many contracts for block sums like $500,000 with far too little detail on exactly what the state was getting for its money. Others, he said, were basically copies of the current year's contracts with the amounts increased here and there but no explanations.

Budget Director Perry Comeaux assured him the budget division reviews every contract. He also assured the governor that seldom is all the money in those contracts actually paid out since payments are made only for actual services.

And Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa said her office has also done a lot of work to make sure every contract does what's intended.

Guinn said he still wants better information before approving the expenditure of so much money.

"It's just that when they come through this many at a time, I don't feel comfortable approving all of these like this," he said.

And pointing to numerous consulting contracts, particularly with the Department of Information technology, he said, "If we've got that many consultants, we ought to be getting better services."

Secretary of State Dean Heller agreed, saying he too would like to get a better idea of how some of those contracts are negotiated and reviewed.

Guinn said over the next year he plans to review the process and that he would also like to get an accounting of the money not spent on those types of contracts.

Altogether, the board approved $69.5 million in contracts for the Division of Child and Family Services to make sure that services to foster children and juveniles in counseling and other programs through the division aren't interrupted.

The old contracts for many such services are set to expire at midnight June 30.