A $57 million contract grows to $555 million!

The Governor says we are "cut to the bone". She says we need to raise taxes to support essential services.

Here is an "essential" service for you: The Department of Information Technology (DIT) entered into a ten-year contract with a well-know computer company for "hardware and software" for the Department of Management and Budget. The original contract value was $57.6 million. Over the life of the contract, that price grew to $555 million. Nobody ever stopped to ask why.

Now, the DMB has 752 full-time employees. Let's see, $555 million over ten years for 752 employees comes out to $73,138.30 per employee, per year. Those must be some special kind of computers!

This is only one of many examples of waste and mismanagement in DIT. For those of you who are interested, I can show you five contracts alone, awarded originally at $90 million, which grew to an astounding $1 BILLION! Have you heard the governor tell us there is waste in government? No, but she does want 700 more full timers in state government next year (not including state police--she wants to cut 29 state troopers.)

Question: If you did business with a company that was this inefficient, would you accept their price increase? Do you think we should raise taxes?