There’s a lot of ways to measure the cost of $2 million in taxpayer money that has gone down the drain. It’s enough money to provide daycare subsidies for 1,000 low-income kids. It could pay for 40 additional child welfare workers. It’s about the amount of money the county spends to operate an elementary school for a year. And it’s the amount the county paid PEC Solutions Inc. for a new criminal justice information system that was supposed to revolutionize the Mecklenburg’s antiquated system, parts of which date back to the early 1980s. The federal government chipped in an additional $3.2 million and the state contributed almost $1 million. What’s more, the county and the sheriff’s office have spent hundreds of man hours on the project.
What has Mecklenburg County gotten for its money so far? A system that is unusable and was delivered more than a year behind schedule. The only parts of this deal that have arrived on time are the bills from Nortel Government Solutions, the company that recently bought PEC.
“That’s very disappointing,” said County Commissioner Norman Mitchell. “We were trying to do something that was right. We can’t waste taxpayer money like that.”
The project started off as a $17.5 million partnership by the county, the state and the federal Department of Justice, to build a computer system that the district attorney, police and jails all could access. Julia Rush, spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, said the proposed system would have let deputies input information from their cars rather than having to drive to the jail to put it in the system.
More importantly, the system would have kept critical data in one place where it could be easily accessed. A recent study by Mecklenburg County found that the current court computer system is so nonfunctional that researchers couldn’t find a resolution in the court system computers for more than 10 percent of cases the courts handle. The time and resources wasted by the jails and courts because of the current system’s inefficiencies was costing the county millions, and leading to unnecessary jail overcrowding, officials were told.
The state and then the federal government dropped out after spending millions on the project, which left county officials with the choice of paying $1.3 million to end the contract with nothing to show for the money they spent, or paying more to develop a reduced version of the system. Commissioners decided to move forward with it.
That was the last County Commissioner Jim Puckett says he heard of the situation until he found out in a closed session meeting last week that the project went bust. Puckett, who assumed the system was already up and running, was surprised to learn the county had been having problems with the company for years. “We had no indication as a board that there were problems,” he said.
Mitchell agrees with Puckett that the board wasn’t updated on the problem despite multiple missed deadlines. Unlike Puckett, Mitchell said he was aware that there were problems because he wondered what was going on and asked county staff about it.
Now Puckett says he’s worried by the somewhat squishy attitude he says the staff had in the closed session meeting about pursuing legal action. “What troubles me is that they are not real solid in whether they would want to pursue legal options to recover the money, and that worries me some,” said Puckett. “The things I heard from county staff were not as cut and dried as I’d like as far as our case goes. My concern now is whether we have documented the process sufficiently.”
County officials say they can’t comment publicly on their legal strategy or how strong of a case they have against Nortel. State law allows government officials to go behind closed doors to discuss legal matters with elected officials.
But county attorney Sandra Bisanar did say she thought the county and the company would likely end up in mediation to settle the matter.
A search of Lexis/Nexis, a news and legal database, turned up no signs of similar problems for the company in the past. The company primarily handles government contracts, and has done work for dozens of government agencies.
Puckett said he will be “extraordinarily upset” if the county loses the money. “One of ironies of that is that the $6 million we wasted would fully fund the DA’s office for a year or so,” said Puckett. “In an attempt to help the judicial system, we may have missed an opportunity.”
The whole fiasco could ultimately end up costing the county more if it has to pay a second time for an updated operating system, which could cost millions again. But a new system is desperately needed and the county will have to foot the bill for it one way or another, Mitchell said: “That’s why it is important that we get our money back.”
State officials appeared to be less upset about their outlay of almost $1 million on the project, and refused to describe it as a “loss.”
Gregg Stahl, senior deputy director of the NC Administrative Office of the Courts, said his department pulled out after it became clear PEC couldn’t deliver what it needed for a statewide system. But the courts still have the design for the system and the “business rules” for operating it, both of which PEC created as part of the project. If a new system ever gets funded, said Stahl, the state can dust those off and use them. Stahl wouldn’t put a monetary value on the designs.
What Nortel intends to do remains a mystery. Calls to the company for comment weren’t returned by deadline.
This article appears in Feb 15-21, 2006.
