“A Mounting Tab to Fix King/Drew”
March 21, 2005
Editor
Los Angeles Times
Times Mirror Square
Los Angeles, CA
Dear Editor,
So Navigant has requested a “change-order” for the sum of $3.4 million, and Ms. Robertson states that the increase reflects, “additional costs that had been anticipated when the contract was signed last fall.” Then why was their bid $3.4 million shy; why not state that the job would take $16.6 million instead of $13.2 million? Why did Navigant submit an underbid for the contract? Of course these are questions that the Board will never ask, why because they had been warned and chose to ignore the warnings of individuals such as others and myself.
I also find it rather amazing that Ms. Robertson is now saying “even simple, basic operational systems were broken.” None of this should be a surprised to supposed experts in the field. All one had to do was read the numerous new reports, review DHS documents that were provided to the Board, etc to understand the depth of the problem, especially in Nursing. And let’s not forget that for almost one year DHS had their own handpicked team of experts managing KDMC so they should have been able to provide Navigant with the unvarnished truth. So there should have been no surprises as to the state of KDMC.
The only questions that the Board needs to ask are why did Navigant underbid the contract? Did anyone from DHS management encourage them to underbid in order to receive the contract? How many more change orders can the people of LA County expect? Of course the Board could also cancel the contract, since it would appear that the contracting process was violated by the underbidding of a contractor or of course Navigant could do what other contractors do when they underbid and that is assume the costs themselves for their error in judgment.
Sincerely,
Geneviève M. Clavreul, RN. Ph.D
