A $160 million contract to run seven youth lockups is once again to go to a for-profit, Indiana-based company after a three-month-long delay that stemmed from complaints by Arkansas nonprofits currently operating the facilities.
In August the state Department of Human Services said Youth Opportunity Investments LLC of Carmel, Ind., was the successful bidder on the contract, edging out two nonprofits that have run the centers for at least two decades.
Executives from those losing bidders -- Consolidated Youth Services Inc. of Jonesboro and Magnolia-based South Arkansas Youth Services -- challenged the decision, and the state Office of Procurement agreed to re-evaluate the bids.
On Nov. 22, the Human Services Department announced that Youth Opportunity Investments was still the winning bidder on the contract to oversee the youth lockups, which house as many as 249 juveniles who are adjudicated as delinquent and placed in state custody.
Officials with the two losing bidders weren't surprised by the decision.
"Our complaints only staved off the inevitable," said Jerry Walsh, who heads South Arkansas Youth Services.
Bonnie Boon, leader of Consolidated Youth, agreed.
But after running the youth centers for decades, they are not ready to concede.
"This is not final yet. We could still have our day in court," Boon said. "We still do not agree that this is the right decision to make. It's not in the best interest of the kids or in the best interest of Arkansas taxpayers."
"It's all going to be with the attorneys now," Walsh said.
The contract must still get legislative approval and has a Jan. 1 start date.
In August, Walsh and Boon issued separate protest letters challenging the state's decision to go with Youth Opportunity.
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The two criticized officials for what they called a dubious selection process after state agencies couldn't furnish individual score sheets showing how evaluators weighed their proposals in each category.
And they wanted to know how the state could afford Youth Opportunity's more expensive proposal. Under the new contract, the state would increase the daily per-bed rate from $147 a day to almost $232.
They also questioned the merits of the company's education and treatment services, even though Youth Opportunity meets federal performance standards.
The state then offered to scrap the initial results and rescore the proposals, prompting Youth Opportunity to issue a pointed response of its own.
"When the law is on your side, pound the law, when the facts are on your side, pound the facts," the firm's lawyer, Sylvester Smith, wrote in a Sept. 16 letter to state officials.
"When both the law and the facts are against you, pound the table. It seems that the allegation of changing the bid sheets is like most of the issues raised by the protestors ... table pounding."
In the letter, Smith went on to defend Youth Opportunity's educational and treatment services. Under the proposal, youths in the centers would benefit from low student-to-teacher ratios and a digital learning program designed at a "pace that's right for them," he explained.
"Our organization has a culture which is reflective of our purpose to help those youth engaged in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems," Smith wrote. "Our plans, our purpose, and our culture were on full display in our response to the [proposal]. That is why we won."
The letter failed to mention that numerous staffing positions included in the company's proposal were slashed during negotiations with state officials after all the bids were scored.
"A proposal score is meaningless if you're not going to do what is written in that proposal," Boon said.
Email correspondence between Youth Opportunity and the Youth Services Division shows that the company plans to reduce or consolidate the number of school principals, case managers, guidance counselors and therapists or psychiatrists at some or all of the sites.
"That is pretty tight, staffingwise," Walsh said. "You probably couldn't work with just that, or if you do, you'll have trouble."
A Section on 11/30/2016