As tempting as it is to focus on GOP bloodletting and email etiquette, I’m going to be the “bad guy” and write about boring policy stuff.
Yesterday brought headline news of state/Northrop Grumman IT outsourcing details. To the extent that there’s conventional wisdom on this massive change, everyone except counties like Wise that have lost out on a facility seem to be dazzled by the scope of the deal, the promised savings to the state, and the projected benefit to the counties that got a piece of the action.
Here’s a slightly contrarian view from an e-zine that apparently specializes in news about outsourcing, with this little snippet of hypothetical number-crunching being the gist:
The average taxpayer in this state pays our imaginary defense contractor $2.50 a year but, if you calculate the net effect of the new payroll money, it works out to only about $2.13 per taxpayer per year. Net-net, the taxpayer is giving the defense company $.37 cents a year.
I would hope that General Assembly would look closely at this deal before ratifying it, not because I necessarily think it’s a bad thing, but just because any expenditure and change this large ought to be able to stand up to scrutiny.
I will repeat my reaction to this deal: Here’s Virginia, named the best managed state in the nation, led by a Governor whose creation of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency was a large reason why Virginia was been so recognized, suddenly outsourcing to private industry the very organization deemed so praiseworthy. Not only that, but the idea to oursource didn’t even come from the state, it came from a proposal thrown over the transom. I like Virginia being an innovator, but we could possibly end up regretting not seeing the concept proven in another state first.
