A recent audit of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority has found that much of the administrative work is subcontracted to outside agencies at a far higher price than the cost to handle such tasks in-house. Among other services contracted at a premium without accountability, PWSA pays somebody to handle their capital-planning budget. The company doing so has been handling this monthly task for more than 6 years without a contract. Have any of those monthly budgets ever included a line-item showing money that would be saved by PWSA doing it's own work? That's unlikely because a subcontractor can hardly be expected to recommend it's own termination, especially when the customer is a lucrative cash-cow that eschews contracts or any of the price-controls that are supposed to be used in such government work.
The audit found many problems with the agency which is no surprise considering they appear to be incapable of doing even the most basic task without a pricey subcontractor stepping in to handle things. Workers at PWSA tell stories of employees who flatly refuse to ever go down into a manhole despite the fact that their job is to descend into manholes for purposes of cleaning, clearing and maintenance. There is at least one long-time employee who has been with PWSA for over 8 years whose job is to do such but the guy has never been in a manhole in his entire employment. When he's on site for routine maintenance or to fix a problem, another unit must be dispatched to the site so that some other laborer can enter the manhole to perform work. He simply refuses to do so and his supervisors, well aware of this man's refusal to perform even the most basic aspect of his position's responsibilities, do not punish him in any way, nor has he been dismissed.
There are employees who have never once in the last few years arrived to work on time but instead have coworkers punch them in every morning before they arrive. There is at least one employee who takes a full hour or longer lunch every single workday despite only being permitted 30 minutes for lunch, so she gets paid -- by our tax dollars -- for the other 30+ minutes she has to herself each day. Employee complaints against such coworkers fall on deaf ears. Supervisors cite foolish reasons for not taking action, including the strength of the union and fear that requiring employees to meet the requirements of their given positions will be perceived as racism, discrimination based on age or gender or --this one is my personal favorite -- favoritism towards the employees who do perform their jobs properly.
Such disgust amongst the lowest level personnel is indicative of complete mismanagement, inefficiency and incompetence all the way up the ladder at PWSA so it's no surprise the audit found the agency to be inadequately maintaining it's system and lacking accountability throughout the entire organization. What is surprising is that the report was issued by a company with close financial ties to the former PWSA head, who was recently forced to resign due to the conflict of interest scandal surrounding his commission of the audit. He holds an unknown stake in the firm yet subcontracted it to audit the agency he heads, perhaps because he desperately wanted to bring the abject incompetence of PWSA to public attention. Or maybe that's just gravy for the public and his motivations were simply to profit from the everyday cronyism of freely awarding contracts without accountability.
Either way, the story actually gets more disturbing: Despite the fact that the audit report was issued more than 2 years ago, PWSA's spokeswoman claims to be unfamiliar with the report and wouldn't discuss it with the Post-Gazette for their story. Does the PWSA actually think that if they sinply refuse to acknowledge the existence of this report, they will never have to answer for it? It doesn't get much more childish and unprofessional than this type of behavior. Coming on the heels of PWSA's instantaneous declaration that their system was in no way responsible for the deaths on Washington Boulevard in August, this is a clear message to residents that PWSA feels no accountability to us whatsoever. And that's a damn shame.
The audit found many problems with the agency which is no surprise considering they appear to be incapable of doing even the most basic task without a pricey subcontractor stepping in to handle things. Workers at PWSA tell stories of employees who flatly refuse to ever go down into a manhole despite the fact that their job is to descend into manholes for purposes of cleaning, clearing and maintenance. There is at least one long-time employee who has been with PWSA for over 8 years whose job is to do such but the guy has never been in a manhole in his entire employment. When he's on site for routine maintenance or to fix a problem, another unit must be dispatched to the site so that some other laborer can enter the manhole to perform work. He simply refuses to do so and his supervisors, well aware of this man's refusal to perform even the most basic aspect of his position's responsibilities, do not punish him in any way, nor has he been dismissed.
There are employees who have never once in the last few years arrived to work on time but instead have coworkers punch them in every morning before they arrive. There is at least one employee who takes a full hour or longer lunch every single workday despite only being permitted 30 minutes for lunch, so she gets paid -- by our tax dollars -- for the other 30+ minutes she has to herself each day. Employee complaints against such coworkers fall on deaf ears. Supervisors cite foolish reasons for not taking action, including the strength of the union and fear that requiring employees to meet the requirements of their given positions will be perceived as racism, discrimination based on age or gender or --this one is my personal favorite -- favoritism towards the employees who do perform their jobs properly.
Such disgust amongst the lowest level personnel is indicative of complete mismanagement, inefficiency and incompetence all the way up the ladder at PWSA so it's no surprise the audit found the agency to be inadequately maintaining it's system and lacking accountability throughout the entire organization. What is surprising is that the report was issued by a company with close financial ties to the former PWSA head, who was recently forced to resign due to the conflict of interest scandal surrounding his commission of the audit. He holds an unknown stake in the firm yet subcontracted it to audit the agency he heads, perhaps because he desperately wanted to bring the abject incompetence of PWSA to public attention. Or maybe that's just gravy for the public and his motivations were simply to profit from the everyday cronyism of freely awarding contracts without accountability.
Either way, the story actually gets more disturbing: Despite the fact that the audit report was issued more than 2 years ago, PWSA's spokeswoman claims to be unfamiliar with the report and wouldn't discuss it with the Post-Gazette for their story. Does the PWSA actually think that if they sinply refuse to acknowledge the existence of this report, they will never have to answer for it? It doesn't get much more childish and unprofessional than this type of behavior. Coming on the heels of PWSA's instantaneous declaration that their system was in no way responsible for the deaths on Washington Boulevard in August, this is a clear message to residents that PWSA feels no accountability to us whatsoever. And that's a damn shame.
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