A group of DeKalb County commissioners says they saved taxpayers millions of dollars last year by requesting audits of high-dollar contracts.
Members of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee said the new review policy — which they put in place amid bigger picture procurement quarrels with the county's CEO — netted about $4.8 million in cost savings. It identified another $24.7 million in funding that could be deferred for the time being, cut from proposed contracts and reallocated to other projects.
DeKalb’s Office of Independent Internal Audit conducted the reviews at the request of the committee, which last summer made it a standing policy to take a closer look at all proposed contracts over $3 million.
"It's not to play gotcha," said District 1 Commissioner Nancy Jester, who served on the committee along with colleagues Steve Bradshaw and Kathie Gannon in 2019. "It's just a good process and a good policy to have."
The committee's road toward the policy started early last year, when an outside review of DeKalb County's larger procurement process was finalized. The review made 27 recommendations, including that all county contracts above $1 million be examined by internal auditors in order to ensure they were awarded fairly and wisely.
DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond did not implement the policy. He argued that, among other things, formalizing a review of contracts would require a change to DeKalb’s organizing documents and voter approval. The CEO also has argued that the commission putting such legislation in place would infringe on his executive powers.
Jester, meanwhile, started voting against any county contract over $1 million. On the PWI committee, she and Gannon started requesting audits of similar contracts brought before them, sans formal legislation.
The committee decided in July to shift the threshold to contracts over $3 million, Jester said.
According to documents provided by chief audit executive John Greene, half of the two dozen contracts reviewed last year were changed.
Much of the $24.7 million in delayed funding came from contracts related to water and sewer projects, which are crucial in DeKalb.
The county has been under a federal consent decree related to its sewer system since 2011. The agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Georgia Environmental Protection Division requires the county to make specific sewage pipe improvements and reductions in sanitation spills by June of this year — a deadline officials have admitted they'll miss despite having made some progress.
Thurmond was quick to point out that the $24.7 million touted by commissioners represents a delay in funding, not a true reduction in the money allocated to the issue his administration has made a top priority.
“The only thing I’d have any concerns with would be that the process is there to undermine, or stop, or delay much-needed work,” the CEO said. “But that hasn’t been the case.”
The idea is that money not immediately needed for a project shouldn’t be tied up in a contract.
“For every dollar you don’t constrain in a contract unnecessarily,” Jester said, “you’ve got that much more bandwidth for something that you do need.”
In DeKalb, committee membership can change from year to year. Gannon and Jester will remain on the PWI committee in 2020 but Commissioner Lorraine Cochran-Johnson will join the group as chair.
Cochran-Johnson said she plans to keep the audit policy in place and also won’t be shy about requesting reviews of contracts below the $3 million threshold when warranted.
“The goal is to ensure we make the best financial decisions possible for DeKalb residents and be good stewards over their money,” Cochran-Johnson said. “In a time when government must do increasingly more with less, we cannot afford to waste money.”
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